In business one thing is eternal: competition.
It does not matter wether you are first on the market or wether you are a monopoly or wether you have all the patents to protect your idea.
The general rule is that if you are successful in any business venture, you will attract competition. Even if you don’t have immediate competition, you will always have alternatives that compete with you.
Coke and Pepsi might be direct competitors but in a way water can be competition to Coke although they are in different categories.
To survive competitive strikes, it’s crucial to be different. The difference has to be a reason why consumers or prospects have to choose your brand or service over the competition’s.
The more powerful the difference, the more business you will be able to generate.
How to be different is a whole marketing discipline.
It’s no wonder why most entrepreneurs and business owners fail in their first year in business. Not very business advisors understand the need to be different and when they do, they don’t have decent guidelines.
You might want to check out Jack Trout’s “Differentiate or Die” for the first and last word on the subject. You will be equipped to survive what he and co-author Steve Rivkin call the “tyranny of choice” which is another way of saying that your brand or service will be the one that customers choose when presented with so many options.
