What are your competitors ultimate goal?

Do you hear that? That’s the sound of your world changing, of competitors, growing, customers needs evolving and disruption in your market. You can’t avoid or stop it. But you can stay ahead by innovating, modernising, delivering what’s needed. And knowing what could be happening next. Business is hard enough when your industry stands still. Unfortunately, it never does, and those pesky competitors are out to beat you. Sure, short term wins should not kill you, but if you are to outlast them, you need to know what they are up to.

Sit down and take some time to understand what they’re up to and want to achieve. To be successful, they need to have more about them than just make more money. What do the owners want to do, what’s their strategy, what will they need to do to achieve things? An excellent place to start is to understand what your rivals ultimate goal is. It usually consists of 3 things:

• People
• Places
• Things

Collate all aspects of people, places and things.

People

What people will they need to achieve want they want? Are they around and how does this compare to what they currently have? Are those skills in your organisation? Is that a threat? How are they going to resolve any skills gaps? What customers will they need? How are they going to get them?

Places

Which markets do they need to enter and which regions do they need to expand? Where will they be when they have achieved their endgame?

Stuff

What equipment will they need? What products will they need to develop? Is the tech available?
How are their R&D and product development teams performing? Will they need more people? What real estate do they need? Now turn the tables and look at yourself. This process may reveal new routes to market. If not, you will know more about yourself and your competitors.

About Octopus Intelligence

Octopus is a global Intelligence service company. Answering the questions to help you grow. We help you beat competitors, increase sales, be disruptive, enter new markets and invest with more certainty with our Strategic and Competitive Intelligence, Due Diligence and good old common sense. We live in an increasingly uncertain, competitive and ever-shifting world. What you need is active real world business development strategy, where deep expertise combines with Competitive Intelligence based actions to answer the what and the how, for the now and the next.