Posted By Industrial Web Solutions Marketing Team on May 5, 2009

A funny thing happened today that I wanted to share.  It was such an odd sequence of events that it got me thinking about competition in general and the way people react to coming face to face with someone who does the same thing you do.  A nicely dressed gentleman came into the office and asked what we did.  Now, this happens from time to time in our building – especially with people who maintain copiers.  But this was a bit different.

When I let him know what we did (website and application design and development, marketing, etc.) his face sort of fell.  He said:  “Oh…so do we.”  So that’s awkward.  At least at first.  Then he says: “how’s business?”  Well, I couldn’t say: “Good enough that we are not going door to door in office buildings!” So instead I introduced him to my boss.  They had a more detailed conversation than I would have and ended up finding out that there were instances where one company focused on an area in the general online space that the other did not.

So they left off “trading numbers” and the man left.  Why did I tell this story?  Well, to be honest, because it raised a lot of questions for me.

• When CAN your competitor be your partner?
• How would you ever know that if you don’t talk to them?
• Is it a viable business opportunity to see exactly what your competitors do that you do not (and vice versa)?

Having no idea if the encounter today is going to result in anything down the line, the questions still remain.  If you get a call from a customer and you cannot do what they need, is it worth it to be able to send them to someone you know can?  I know the first order of business is to see if you have something that will accomplish customer’s goal and sell him that.  but if you really just can’t sell them anything, do you want to still be able to help them?

My answer to that is yes.  What’s yours?

Categories: Opinion
Tags: business development, competition