Richard Telofski, Founder and President of The Kahuna Institute, Inc (http://www.KahunaInstitute.com), joins us to discuss recognizing your real competition and how to anticipate and plan for their effect on your business... Read the Transcript

Richard Telofski Founder & President The Kahuna Institute http://KahunaInstitute.com

Richard Telofski is the founder and president The Kahuna Institute, Inc., a research organization specializing in "irregular competition," i.e., activists and adversarial NGOs that attack companies. He was also the founder and head of The Becker Research Company, Inc., one of the world's first competitive intelligence consultancies, where he worked with Fortune 100 clients. Richard is the author of four books including Insidious Competition - The Battle for Meaning and the Corporate Image, his latest book, and Dangerous Competition, his second book. Prior to his strategic consulting career, he was a professor of economics and marketing at Monmouth University and Georgian Court University.

Businesses must pay close attention to the entire potential competitive space and how that affects the way they do business. Many businesses remain shocked when the competition does not turn out to be who they expected.  In this article, we examine how the nature of competition is changing and how companies can prepare and strategize for this trend, using it to their advantage. One of the biggest competitors that businesses tend to overlook is that of their own customers. It is not just their potential to make deals with your supply network, but also their needs and expectations for your products. Customers compete directly through the direct to profit model that producers are currently and quickly implementing. Companies need to pay close attention not only to the needs of the customer but also to the changing marketplace dynamics. In some industries, but increasingly moving into others, customers also play the role of direct competitor. Vendors are often hired by one company to conduct some sort of function that the hiring company cannot provide to their client company. Vendors could also directly compete with you for business. In the software industry a customer could develop a piece of software that encourages other customers to switch. Hidden competitors come from other industries. A major example of this occurs in the banking industry where companies such as Wal-Mart and Google want to open their own financial institutions. Companies need to think about how that affects the way they approach competitors for one important reason... they may have advantages that other companies don’t.  It may not even be that obvious as another company coming into the space. Probably the most troubling of unknown competitor lies in the group called indirect competitors. Don’t just look at competitors that do what you do... look for those that CAN do what you do. To create advantage from this growing trend, consider the following. Know your real competition or become irrelevant overnight. Understand your customer as competitor. Prepare for your vendors to be competitors. Anticipate your indirect competition from other industries. Lastly, consider how you can be the competition others do not expect.