A strong team is the key to success. Indianapolis 500 doesn’t list drivers as individuals on their website, they list drivers as members of a team. Because without a team a driver is useless. Without a good team a driver might as well not race.

Former UFC light heavyweight champions, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and “Suga” Rashad Evans are set to fight on Saturday, May 29th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Imagine a UFC fighter not studying his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses before a fight. Why would he even bother going into the ring? You can bet Jackson and Evans know each other’s fight inside out.

 “Everything you do must be done with a view toward your existing or potential competitor, and his or her likely responses to your actions.”

-Brian Tracy, Turbostrategy.

Before you can help your business coaching clients with their marketing strategy, you are going to have to get a handle on who they are competing against. Your client needs to know who he is fighting before he goes into the ring.

And that can change. I’ll give you an example.

There’s a motorcycle-rider training program on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The training offers 10 hours in classroom, 10 on bikes, they supply the bikes and riding gear. Up until about five years ago, this guy owned the market. No-one else on the island specialized in teaching motorcycle riding. Then one of the driving schools hired a motorcycle riding instructor. Their students provided their own bikes and gear, but the prices were way lower for essentially the same program.

New competition. That meant he had to change things up. He increased his market presence with some serious branding and an advertising campaign.

Last year, two new motorcycle-training schools appeared in town. They offer the bikes, equipment and the same training time. Now he has a whole new fight on his hands.

Use some of your Brian Tracy tools to help your client develop systems that monitor the competition continuously. The systems should identify:

• Who he is competing against – Businesses come and go, strategies and target markets change. A new product from an old company may suddenly become competition.
• How the competitor competes – Two things here:
  • One is respect: it isn’t wrong to learn from how the competition competes
  • Two is caution: a change in the competition’s tactics can mean a loss of customers for the unaware and unprepared.

Once you know who they are fighting, use your Brian Tracy Training, put your experience to work and help your client build a wicked marketing strategy.

Let me just be clear that, just because I used the UFC analogy, FocalPoint Business Coaching doesn’t condone violence as a business strategy! Thanks for dropping by!