Comparing Yourself to Your Competitors
It's natural to compare yourself to others. Business schools, athletics coaches and even your parents encourage you to know your competition. But who exactly is your competitor? Can another business owner with a similar concept really be your competition? Can he or she honestly run the business the way you run yours? Will that necessarily mean you will have less success? Couldn't it just as easily mean you will be more successful? Be careful when benchmarking your progress by using someone else's standards.
This is the lesson I just shared with a good friend who recently bought a franchise in the same business as another friend. There has been some mild concern because they have different approaches to their operations. I assured her that this is completely natural and does not mean they cannot both succeed.
Franchises succeed in part because they have systemized a lot of the day-to-day processes and take some of the guesswork out of the set-up. Yet, like any business, their true successes lie in the business managers--the ones who execute the plans. Among the keys to a manager's success is awareness of his or her unique characteristics, and the ability to mold these qualities into unique products or services that create sales. Right? Thus, there is no one right way to manage a business.
My friend and I identified a list of factors that will determine her success in her new business venture. The list is not all-inclusive, but includes:
- Individual goals for the business
- Visions relating to the business, how it fits into short-term personal plans and how it fits into long-term plans
- Dependence on the business for life-sustaining income
- Geographic location
- Pricing
- Marketing
- Sales team
- Product quality
- Customer service
- Community involvement
In short, trust yourself. It's good to know where others are and what is working for them. However, there is more than one guru in the world and in every industry.
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