One of the best uses of competitive intelligence (aka spying on your competitors) is to learn what not to do.

I don't mean that in the sense that they must be doing something wrong (though often they are).

I mean it in the sense that you need to stand out and do something different, even if what they're doing works for them.

I went through this exercise myself a while back, here's a quick and effective way of doing it.

Firstly, list the people you think compete directly with you. That means the people your potential clients would consider as an alternative to you even if they don't do precisely the same thing as you.

For example, if you do leadership coaching, maybe your client would consider training or a mentoring program or online learning as an alternative.

Be realistic: as a leadership coach you're unlikely to be competing head to head with Marshall Goldsmith, for example. Pick the people who end up on the same shortlists as you.

Then look at their marketing: their websites and any other promotional activities they do.

For each of your main competitors look at their main service or product offering and make a list of:

• What their primary promise is. What's a one-sentence summary of the main thing they say clients will get if they hire them?
• The additional benefits that clients will also get from hiring them. For example, the primary promise of a business coach might be to double your sales. Additional benefits might be to give you more free time, improve the capabilities of your staff, etc.
• The main features of their service or product. If they're a coach, do they meet face to face with clients? Over the phone? Is it weekly or monthly? Etc. If it's a product, is it online? Is it a one-off or ongoing membership? Are there live-calls? Etc.
• Their primary go-to-market strategy. Do they win clients through networking? Do they do seminars? Are they running online ads? Do they have a defined “funnel”?
• Finally (and most importantly) what do they say about how they're different? More experienced? A different way of doing things?   

I'm going to show you how to analyse this information next week, but for this week your task is to do this analysis for your top 3-5 direct competitors.

See you next week!