Dealing With Competition

It’s normal at first to fear or be frustrated with increased competition. Our immediate reaction to increased competition is one of self-doubt or scarcity. The only way increased competition can hamper your ability to succeed is if you choose to acknowledge or give into these fears and become reactive to them.

If you stay focused on your plan and continue to drive your business forward increased competition almost always enhances your ability to succeed by creating greater awareness and ultimately a larger audience for your products and services.

As many of you may know I own and operate a very successful training studio in a small city (total population under 100,000) but what you may not know is that within a 4 block there are more than 12 fitness related businesses including: 2 training studios, a Crossfit gym, Jazzercise, 2 Pilates studios, 2 weight loss centres, 2 martial arts studios, a public gym and a Kettlebell gym. Additionally there are also more than 6 complimentary businesses including an organic market, physiotherapy clinic, 2 massage clinics, 2 spas and more. In all you could say this is the fitness district.

Let me also mention we are the most expensive out of all our competitors by a significant margin, in fact one of my primary competitors tends to focus on this very fact thinking it is an advantage. Personally I’d rather always be the Ferrari than the Ford.

Here are my tips for making competition a non-factor:

1)   Always provide more value to your community than anyone else. By this I mean be a star educator. Use your blog, website, lunch and learns and writing for local publications to always be the top expert in your area that gives away as much free information as possible. The more you give and the longer you give the more deep routed your credibility will be in your community. Things like fundraisers and community events also contribute to this positioning.

2)   Create systems that allow you to efficiently handle the same situations over and over with great efficiency as you grow. The better and more consistent your customer experience is the more you can stay focused on business growth.

3)   Create highly leveraged situations and tremendous additional value. By being more expensive we can afford to provide random and unexpected gifts to our customers. Why not send people meaningful birthday gifts? This can be as simple as asking their favouriote author, store and Starbucks or Tim’s on their initial client info form. Or by using semi-private and group programs you can leverage 1^st month and ongoing VIP discounts to create immediate unadvertised value for new prospects.

4)   Avoid last minute marketing. Most personal trainers I know are engaged in a constant feast or famine cycle. The don’t promote until they desperately need clients and then freak out when they have too many. Set a calendar even if at first it’s just choosing special dates and holidays (like birthdays, anniversaries and special dates) for set promotions and targets. At first this seems difficult but just think how difficult it would be to train your clients without some sort of goal to work toward.

5)   Most importantly take up a Ray Kroc (if you didn’t know he was the founder of McDonalds) mentality, work to always “create faster.” One thing is certain, if you are growing your competition will make the same mistakes you likely did when you started. You will first attempt to copy or duplicate the ideas of someone you believed more successful than you. At some point to truly succeed you will need to find your own voice, when you do stay focused on your own ideas and continually create. Be the leader, followers react which is never as powerful as the person that takes action in the first place.