We all face competition from time to time, be it in academics, at work, in business or in sports.
We compete for opportunities, resources, jobs, good people, power and influence, among other things. Only the best prepared competitors win. Now, how can you best prepare yourself for competition?
1. Master your opponents
You cannot win any competition unless you fully know and master your opposition. You need to study your competitors and even write down all the strengths and weaknesses of each of your opponents.
2. Offer simple alternative
For competition between companies, if your opponents launch a successful product or service, you need to quickly come up with a simple but effective alternative to eat into the blossoming market share of your competitor.
3.Build bigger brand
Brand is everything in the market. For companies, we know that those companies that have a bigger and more attractive brand easily make more sales. They are able to command a bigger market share and they get more customers buying their products and services.
But even in football, as an example outside companies in traditional trading of goods and services, good branding helps to win in football, to some degree.
Football teams that have a bigger brand command bigger following of fans who help energise and motivate the players on the field. You can extend and apply this principle of branding in any other type of competition and you will find that the bigger and more attractive the brand is, the better the chance of winning.
4. Build strong partnerships
Competitors that have better and bigger partnerships stand a better chance of winning. They have access to better and more resources. They can easily improve on their performance and strategy. They have easy access to best practices and can reinforce their weaknesses through exchange programmes.
5. Operate adaptably
History has shown time and time again that armies that operate adaptably easily win battles and wars. We can learn from the military world how best to operate in the face of competition. Keep changing the way you operate in competition so that your opponents fail to catch up and to counter your tactics. Remember that the opponents are constantly studying you and coming up with counter measures against your best strategies.
6. Act faster
You may be adaptable, but if you are slow, your competition will quickly catch up with you. They will learn your tactics and counter them before your strategies can take effect. Act fast and much faster than your opponent. Surprise them all the time. Then you will win!
7.Keep improving
As you compete, once you start leading or winning, you will find that the competitors will also be raising their game and catching up with you. You will only continue to win if you keep improving your areas of competence and advantage.
8.Exploit their weaknesses
Every competitive exercise has to be different and has to reflect the type of opponent that you have. Each opponent has strong as well as weak areas. You will win if you exploit the weaknesses of your opponents. You need to approach the competition with a view that clearly understands not just the strengths but also the weakness of your opponent.
9. Fill your gaps
Just as you will be exploiting weaknesses of your opponents, clever competitors will want to exploit your weaknesses too. And so, you need to ensure that you close all weak points as much as you can manage. Those weak areas that remain weak, you need to cover them up – do not let your enemies know your weakest points as you will be exposing yourself to danger, the danger of losing.
10. Do it better than the competitors
In the end, the question of who wins is down to who does it better. Measure yourself against each of the competitors point by point. Make sure that where you lose, if any losses, you should lose with a very thin insignificant margin and where you win, you should sweep a large gap.
This way, you will compensate for any small gaps where you lag. You need to benchmark yourself against each one of the competitors and this exercise needs to be done proactively
