It has never been easier for you to research your competitors than it is today. In minutes, you can tell if someone is serious competition to your business or simply a dabbler.

For example.

• You can visit their website and tell instantly if it looks professional and up-to-date or not.
• Their site will also show you the range of services they offer and the guarantees they provide.
• In some cases, you can see what they charge and whether they offer payment terms, etc.
• You can also check their social media footprint and see if they are using it professionally and how large their social networks are.

Over the years I’ve worked with thousands of business owners. One of the things I see over and over again, is a tendency to underestimate the service offered by their competitors. This is a potentially fatal mistake.

Here are 2 of the main reasons why this happens.

1. Hard work and dedication

They work so hard on their own businesses and care so passionately about their own clients, that they can’t imagine their competitors being equally committed. In reality, the vast majority of business owners work their tail off and try extremely hard to keep their clients happy.

We need to avoid underestimating our competitors at all costs. It’s a mindset that can cause us to ease off the gas. To coast. And in doing so, we make it way too easy for our hard-working, professional competitors to eat our lunch!

2. Biased reporting

There are a lot of people out there, who will tell us what they think we want to hear. Others will tell us what they want us to believe. In either case, their reporting is not telling it like it is.

Here are a few examples.

• If you attract a new client, who was fired by one of your competitors for being impossible to work with, that new client will seldom tell you. Instead, they’ll often say they left because the service was lousy or another fake reason.
• Similarly, when you hire people who previously worked for one of your competitors, they’ll often trash-talk about them.
• Many business owners use the same suppliers as some of their competitors. If you ask a supplier how your competition are doing, you’ll often get negative reports. Don’t take too much notice. Remember, those who are unprofessional enough to share (or fabricate) news about their customers with you, are unprofessional enough to give fake feedback.

It’s worth taking feedback like the above with a large pinch of salt.

In short

If you’re going to assume anything about your competitors, assume they are hard-working professionals who are targeting your clients. That will stop any chance of complacency from creeping in.

Your competitors are clowns was written by Jim Connolly and originally published on Jim’s Marketing Blog