Beating the Competition

One of the first steps is knowing how to play the game. A lot of you are very good at selling the product or service that you represent – you’ve gone to college, invested money and time on being expert on getting that hat completely on. However, now that you are business owners, you also have a multitude of hats in your business, some of you have so many hats that you wear that they are stacked up to the ceiling.

How much money have you spent becoming the CEO of your business? The majority of the time when a business owner comes to Measurable Solutions, this is the first investment they have made in becoming a little bit more proficient as a CEO.

What does this have to do with beating the competition? Everything! I use to work with dentists in the mid ‘80s in Seattle, Washington in a building in the middle of downtown. There were 80 separate dental offices in that building. When a dentist retired and moved out of the building, a brand new dentist would move into that office. Do you know what? The dentists in the bigger practices would come around and take that guy under his arm and mentor him and show him how to get new patients and show him how to do a better job and show him how to be a much faster success than they were.

Now, what if you had that in this profession? Usually, when a new business moves in across the street from an existing business, that existing business says “Oh my gosh, what am I to do? This competition is going to be robbing customers from me before you know it.”

However, there are more than enough customers to go around so what is all the worry and drama concerning existing or potential competition?

The problem is this: your community, your referral sources and even your customers don’t truly know what you do; they don’t know what kind of results you get.

I’ve told business owners this datum with regard to competition when they come in as a new Measurable Solutions’ client. They look at me kind of cross-eyed but, after a while of learning how to expand their practice and gain more control over the business, they come to me and say, “Jeff you were right – there isn’t any such thing as competition. That’s just a bunch of hooey.” They are now equipped to win the game and know that there is really no competition to beat.