Creating your competition. You can’t build a substitute offering within your own company, so build it in theirs.

Competition is inevitable. This is a good thing, it reassures the prospect that the industry is credible and they can test between choices.

1. The ‘safe’ choice wins the category for ‘premium cost’ – they get to make outsized profits.
2. The ‘substitute’ offering wins ‘lower cost of acquisition but longer time to recover sunk costs‘ – being the number 2 player in an industry isn’t a horrible thing – if you can stay close behind the industry leader, but also maintain the distance from the tertiary players in the industry. Being the #3 player in an industry is fatal.

Have the discipline to refer unsuitable prospects to the substitute offering, poison the well of the competition.

The return will be a residual, old prospects will grow into your offering, they will refer you the best of their peers. By doing this your are quickly giving the competition the problemsome, low margin clients.

Let the competitor exhaust their resources servicing high demand, low margin clients.

Map out a competitor that you can win the battles for the key prospect/client profile you are pursuing. If this company doesn’t yet exist you have to seek them out.

Breed your competition in your test tube.

The End?