Know your rival. Simulate its behaviour. Be steps ahead.

How to adopt a BrandWars? mentality and take action where it matters.

By Peter Rodriguez, MBA, Chartered Marketer.

Business leaders know they need to understand their external environment.

However, the pressure of delivering short-term results frequently gets in the way of incorporating well rounded assumptions on the behaviour of customers and competitors.

 "We should think like our customers". "We need to predict what our competitors will do"  are phrases usually heard in boardrooms.  

It is no rocket science. But it is easier said than done.

Simulating human behaviour, like a rival's actions or a customer's next demand takes time, focus and know-how. The reality is that senior leaders know how to do this, but have limited time and resources to get to it.

With leadership teams over-stretched to do more with less, it is no surprise to see that many marketing and business plans have limited insight about scenarios of competitive and customer action and reaction.  

Adopting a BrandWars? mentality is not difficult. It enables a company to simulate competitive and customer actions. When such thinking is incorporated into a marketing / business plan, it prepares a Brand to be steps ahead, it provides an edge against competitors and it offers an advantage when negotiating with customers.  

How to incorporate the BrandWars? mentality into a planning cycle

1.-  Know your enemy as you know yourself.

Maintain a good competitive review.

This is a golden business habit. As any valuable habit, it takes effort to acquire.

Make it a habit to synthesize your customer and competitive intel into a one-page summary.(The longer it is, the less people will read it). Update it every 6 months.

Have your Business Review and your Strategic Plan summarized in two pages. (The longer it is, the more difficult it is for the organization to understand and follow.)

Update it every year.

2.-  Walk a mile in your competitor's and your customer's shoes

Simulate your customer and competitor behaviour.

Armed with a current competitive review, invest time in an offsite environment to simulate what your competitor and customer are going to do next.  

The better the intel, the better the simulation will be.

This will provide scenarios and their likelihood. Use this insight, improve your plans to outsmart them before they take action.

This will also allow you to create contingency plans that will save you precious time and will give you the edge of "speed to market" in case that adverse scenarios materialize.

 It is serious business but it is fun to do.

3.- Stick to what you do best

Simulating competitive and customer behaviour is critical to your business but it is not the core of your business.

It is intense but it is not complicated. It takes time and resources. Something that organizations do not have in excess. It can be a distraction when an organization tries to do it alone.

Instead of tasking a management team (or yourself) with planning and running competitive behaviour simulations,  it is cost-effective to get the help, know-how and focus of companies for whom this is their business. You will still have to invest time as a participant, but not as the organizer. 

Do it before your competitors do it.

Peter Rodriguez MBA is a Chartered Marketer by the CMA, and the CMO of Brand Igniter Inc. a Canadian company who helps busy leaders find new growth with IGNITUS? Brand Ignition System, which includes business methodologies like  BrandWars? , BrandMI? and BrandRoots?