How to be competitive and be unique

​How to create differentiation through being competitive & Competitive Leadership advantage

A competitive advantage it is what distinguishes you from the competition in ALMOST EVERYTHING whether you are seeking a soul-mate, a customer or a job. It is applicable to individuals, corporations, businesses and countries.

Few Basics about Distinction, Uniqueness & Niches that Powers & Propels Your Personal, Business, Social, Organizational & Professional Brand

1.Your competitive advantage comes from the perception of others, this perception gets created in the mind of your target audience based on what unique or exceptional value addition or benefits they feel they would get by associating with you[your brand, and your company].
2.It is about the "distinctive position" that you enjoy [both positive & negative] in the mind of your prospects. Most of the time it is a single powerful word that occupies their mind and is emotionally connected with their passionate wants and desires.
3.If your customers have very strong positive emotional connect with you or your brand and product it may eliminates your competition completely.
4.Positioning or competitive advantage is always based on your customer's implicit as well as explicit needs and their perception on how well you can meet it.
5.It is always possible that that your brand's persona may have different position in the mind of two different customers, it can also have even contradictory appeal to your two different customers.
6.Creating differentiation for the sake of it, without connecting the dots between the cost and the value/benefit delivered to customers is just an avoidable wastage

We will be using the word customer & market, it does not mean that this article is all about business alone, all that is written here is actually applicable to your entire life aspects like relationships, success, happiness, your social life as well as your growth.

Creating an iconic brand for your product & services

1.Knowing your product's features and advantages is not enough, understanding how your offer benefits your different customers in different and unique ways is the key.
2.You have to be constantly aware of new trends that affect your product, especially new technology & upgrade yourself to encash from it.
3.You've got to know exactly who buys from you, what all problems can you solve and how you can make their life better
4.You should know about all your competitors, it includes every choice your customer has to meet their need. Newspapers used to think initially for a long time that their competition was with other newspapers until they realized it was the internet.
5.To be successful not only you need to know the needs of your customers and how your product can benefit them but also you need to be able to connect with your prospects & customers and be able to articulate same in more impactful ways than your competition, That's your competitive advantage.
6.If you are an employee, work as if you were in business for yourself. If you work like it is your business & can communicate same to your superiors and your clients that building the ground for your promotion, growth and solid brand in the industry itself

Differentiation means you deliver better benefits than anyone else.

A company can achieve differentiation by providing a unique or high-quality product. Another method is to deliver it faster. A third is to market in a way that reaches customers better. A company with a differentiation strategy can charge a premium price. That means it usually has a higher profit margin.

Focusing on the following areas can be the Edge a Competitive Leadership can give you

1."Value-Addition' leadership – it is about giving unique values to all its major stake-holder Clients, employees, vendors etc
2."Need Satisfying Niche Market" leadership
3."Helpful & Prompt Delightful Service" Leadership
4."Convenience [ease of connecting with you & getting their needs met]" Leadership
5."Innovation" Leadership
6."Reinventing & Recreating Itself" Leadership
7."Learning & Disruptive Change" Leadership
8."Quality' Leadership
9."People" Leadership
10.Industry/Field "Leader of Leaders" Leadership [Where your leaders are look at as the light-houses for other Leaders]
11."Process Bench-marking" Leadership
12."Trust" Leadership
13."Customer as its ambassador" Leadership – this is the highest level that any company can hope for, where the customers starts promoting on their own
14."Aura" Leadership When they brands becomes synonymous with the generic words[Google it(search it on the internet) or Google is God, or Xerox it(photocopy it)]

Factors to Consider for Differentiation, A difference is worth establishing when it meets at least one of the following criteria

1.The perceived benefit beats the cost in such a way to make the cost insignificant Even if your products and services are expensive customers believe that they are getting solid value
2.Ensuring that your product and or services give critical reasons for their success
3.Your offer is different, unique, practical, effective and solves your customer's most important problems
4.Your offer makes the life of your clients simpler, safer, economical and any such benefits those are important to them
5.Technically simple to use and uses the latest features
6.Engages with the customers on emotional level
7.Reaching out to your customers in many channels and making them aware about your value addition in a meaningful manner, on regular basis.
8.Creating and occupying so unique a niche that it is kind of unaffordable to get into by competition
9.It contributes to the growth & success of your clients

How to be different –Understanding your competition

1.Eliminating competition by changing the playing field using disruptive strategies, tactics and value-offerings
2.Understand the DNA of your competitors, How do they compete against you, in the eyes of your customers, what are the strong and weak sides of each of your competitors, what are the compelling reasons for your customers to buy from your competitors
3.Define using as many parameters to show you are different from the competition, then identify what factors in the value chain create opportunities to offer additional value to your target customer that the competition is overlooking
4.Define your competitive edge by finding different ways of being unique in the marketplace.

How to be different – Engaging Your Customers

1.Be first in the market
2.Establish leadership
3.Establish yourself being perceived as an expert. Develop your reputation and expertise with knowledge-sharing activities, such as writing blogs, articles or white papers, or presenting webinars.
4.Establish your expertise by focusing on one particular niche to develop market specialization.
5.Ensure that your products and services provide what the customers want plus more and are perceived as state of art latest
6.Ensure that you respond to changes fast
7.Ensure that you handle complaints fast & improve in such a way that your complaint making customers brings others
8.Ensure that your employees are treated in such a way to give their best to your customers
9.Study your competitors and learn how they target a market problem. Ensure that the problem is an important one, and that your solution is better. Then reposition this market problem with your own unique solution.
10.Make sure to position your product and services as the "next generation
11.Maintain your competitive edge, by continuously engaging with your clients in a deeper and meaningful ways
12.Making your own offers[product/services] obsolete and giving your clients the future products today

How to be different – Engaging your Employees

1.Attracting, Retaining & Nurturing a talented is a very difficult proposition if your leadership is not mature.
2.Understanding & Implementing what fundamentally drives your talents
3.Creating interesting, challenging and exciting work environment.
4.Giving Employees reasons to feel pride in what is being accomplished and for associating with you.
5.Giving them freedom to experiment, make mistake & reward the exceptional performers exceptionally
6.Respecting Valuing and Recognizing employees for their contributions.
7.Being available to employees
8.Communicating clearly and letting them know what is expected of them.
9.Encouraging upward, downward & parallel communication.
10.Creating opportunities for dialogue with lower-level managers and employees to explore and implement Their ideas and input.
11.Creating a culture of candor
12.Having rock solid integrity in what you say and do.
13.Inspire confidence in the future of the organization by trying to minimize uncertainty, by involving employees and sharing information
14.Leading from the front in challenging times along with your employees
15.Practicing meritocracy & showing faith in your employees
16.Responding quickly to operational challenges and competitive threats and stay abreast of any trends that are driving or disrupting change.

Pitfalls to avoid

1.Creating Uniqueness that is not very valuable to your customers, that is Focusing on a characteristic/features that is neither wanted or nor perceived important by them is sheer waste of time and money.
2.You may differentiate in such a way that you leave yourself exposed to a competitor that can offer the right level of differentiation at a lower cost.
3.If your price to customer for your differentiated product is too high your customers will quickly find an alternative.
4.Ignoring Signaling Criteria, by which an ignorant customer choose one brand over other - if you are selling to inexperienced customers or buyers who don't understand the difference in value of one product from another, you leave yourself exposed to a company that offers a product that is lower value but has a better understand of signaling.
5.Differentiation often requires that you invest heavily in the areas that you are looking to set yourself apart. However if the price you charge, your customer's perceived value are not connected, then there is no differentiation.
6.There are many ways to differentiate a product, many aren't directly tied to the product at all. It's important that you fully understand how your product fits into the larger ecosystem.
7.Not understanding the customers real needs, want and the problems

The Rules of Healthy Competition, How to Win Every-time

When your focus is only to improve yourself, You can be competitive without being stepping on people to grow & move upward. Here's how to win and still have good relationship with people.

1.Identify who are the role models, look at them only to identify and imbibe their positive qualities. Always focus to go up against talented people only to sharpen your skills and raise your own performance bar
2.Women Increase Your Confidence Level, as very few of you are taught how to function in competitive situations. Because most of the men feel sorry for the women when they lose women too learn to feel terribly sorry for themselves.
3."At the same time, women are praised whenever they win in extra highlighting way, which creates pressure on women to perform flawlessly to gain love and approval." Only a minuscule of women do get competition right — and enjoy the process, who are as happy both personally and professionally
4.Men & Women please understand, Winning increases self-assurance, but losing is just as valuable because you learn how to pick yourself up and try again.
5.Stop competing when does not matter, Compete Only When It Counts
6.Ensure that the things you're competing for are the things that you value
7.Win fairly among friends
8.Learn the Right Way to Lose
9.Develop resilience, Start by competing in situations where you don't expect to win and that aren't overly important to you, so any loss won't be ego-crushing.
10.Identify what is the most important element in your win, ensure that others win too
11.If you find yourself full of envy, jealousy and want to suppress them to win,ask yourself Are you and she competing for power, position, popularity, If so, admit it, inwardly at least and resolve not to engage in backstabbing, this may help in short term but long term you would lose big time guaranteed
12.Accept Applause, Don't deflect praise for anything
13.When you have an Overly Competitive Friend, just accept it as a compliment. It means he/she values what you've achieved.
14.Don't tolerate put-downs, always handle it with assertiveness & may turn it into humor as Insulting is not the same as being competitive

Ways to Promote Healthy Competition

1.Always Reward people equally, follow meritocracy
2.If you reward people equally, regardless of performance, you will create an environment of mediocracy.
3.Set stretch goals.
4.Give honest performance feedback.
5.Create opportunities to play and have fun
6.Create the right balance of teamwork and healthy competition.
7.Competition doesn't have to be serious or even directly related to a business objective.
8.Beyond setting formalized goals, incorporate fun challenges into your company's culture
9.Congratulate your opponents when they win or experience success
10.Celebrate respectfully, Be a gracious winner
11.Keep a consistent attitude whether you win or lose. Great competitors earn respect, both in the way they compete and in how they handle themselves after their victories and defeats
12.If you must rely on others to win a competition and find yourself frustrated by their performance, coach, mentor and hand-hold
13.Take care not to be overly competitive in individual or group activities

Competition At Work, Positive Or Simply Awful, it depends

1.Creating the correct type and amount of competition is hard to get right.
2.Healthy competition can be a positive incentive in the workplace.
3.On the other side, too much competition can be deadly – killing morale, causing stress, and fostering backstabbing.
4.Strive for "cooperative competition."
5.Understanding the difference between productive competition and competition that brings people (and productivity) down is key.
6."Don't create unnecessary conflict with your co-workers by turning everything into a competition, Leaders should use competition judiciously.
7.Understand the gravity of instigating competition and its repercussions; you don't want to create a battle just because you can.
8.Always be prepared to shut competition down if it's causing damage -- or you may find that people decide to compete outside the company for their next job.

The Benefits, Difference & Harms between "Feeling Competitive" and "being competitive"

Feeling competitive can be good for us, as allowing ourselves to feel our competitive feelings is actually healthy. Our competitive feelings are an indication of what we want, and acknowledging what we want is key to getting to know ourselves. Competitive feelings don't discriminate

Being competitive can have an ugly impact in our life and in society as is happening in our current age.

The harmful way being competitive can impact our life's goals. When being competitive is bad for us and the people around us

1.When we become Cynic, overly critical of other's success & happiness
2.When we gossip with malice to distort other's image
3.When we envy others and try to sabotage them
4.When we deny our feelings of wanting to win & in use self-denial to suppress our needs and desires
5.When we are jealous and feel & act like victim
6.When we get into self-hatred mode

Resilience: Why It's Vital and How To Enhance It

1.Resilience in individuals refers to the ability to self-soothe and bounce back emotionally after a frustrating, painful or in some other way negative event so we are ready for whatever comes to us next, good or bad.
2.Resilience in couples refers to their ability to learn, grow and heal after upsets instead of letting misunderstandings accumulate until they create big problems in marriage.

Please read my blog on resilience in this website.

The Unhealthy "Almost Always Competing Syndrome" -Dangers of Overly Competing

1.It seems like we now have a competitive reality show for nearly every activity imaginable.
2.The message that you should want to stop striving to improve, even when you are very successful, can be good
3.But The mindset that each event in life is an occasion to beat someone is as harmful as it can get.
4.Many people develop the always competing tendencies called and have the following self-berating internal dialogue
I.Some people spend a lifetime clocking their non-accomplishments and dreaming of a big break
II.I am not living the life I expected
III.I do not have what others have
IV.I could have done just that
V.It's not that I think I'm a total loser. I can hold my own at cocktail parties. I can pitch a tent. I've got more in me, too, I think
VI.Many of us make our happiness dependent on our most immediate close groups.

Although this phenomenon is not a clinical diagnosis, it can be called the "Almost Always Competing Syndrome"

1.When we Look-Up for wrong reasons it pulls us Down
2.The key is to remain "self-focused," to allow ourselves to be motivated by other's qualities & their accomplishments while learning to develop those qualities in us.
3.Stop comparing with super successful people to compete with them,
4.Know Your Talents (And Limits)
5.Learn to love the life you're living
6.Work Smart, Not Just Hard
7.Keep a List of Proud Moments
8.Practice Some Downward-Facing Comparison with people who are underprivileged

Parents' Competitive Drive Is Creating children who are with FOMO & who are driving themselves as well as parents crazy

Read about this "Fear of Missing Out" in my blog in this website

Parents' desire for a child to win can sometimes have the opposite effect.

Some parents are enthusiastic about winning to the point of being disappointed and even upset when their child loses in sports.

These Parents most often help raise a child whose ability to succeed and therefore win get affected most negatively & make them a loner and self-centered one.

Helping children cope with winning and losing.

1.Being able to tolerate winning and losing is an essential social skill for children.
2.Many children have trouble coping with winning and losing. They gloat and brag when they win.
3.They cheat or argue to change the rules to try to make sure they win. They cry, sulk, or accuse others of cheating if they lose.
4.They quit in the middle of a game if things aren't going their way. I've also seen kids who are afraid to compete because they don't want to be "mean" by beating anyone.
5.If any of these sound familiar, your child may need some help in learning to handle competition.
6.Here are ideas of some "intermediate steps" you can take with your child. You can use as many or as few of these as your child needs.
7.Make them beat their own records, Self-competition is an easy way to start learning to tolerate winning and losing.
8.Create Family Pastimes games where everyone wins or loses together, which means your child has company in coping with the outcome.
9.Find out and have Very short games where the child knows that she/he can try again to win after a loss, after changing something.
10.Competing with your children in fun way
11.Encourage your children to go for team games of their choice in the community as well as in the school
12.Winning is exciting. Losing is disappointing. The key to coping with either is to understand that these are temporary states.
13.In Healthy Competition, Parents support healthy competition by encouraging their children to focus on doing their best, having fun and learning a skill. In this Participants are encouraged to improve themselves and learn a new technique. Winning is just an added bonus
14.Where as in Unhealthy Competition, only focusing on winning at any cost. Here Parents are encouraging their child to be better than others. The pressure to win is more important than having fun or learning a new skill. Children who do their best and still lose feel like a failure.

Why as parent, You Might Be Encouraging Unhealthy Competition & What to do instead

1.By being bad example through being caught up in the excitement and start criticizing
2.By making negative comments on the ride back home. Don't dwell on the final outcome; instead note how well your child preformed, how nicely the team worked together, and how hard everyone worked. 3. Comparisons
3.Comparing your children to one another is a bad idea. Try to avoid letting even an occasional, "Why can't you be more like your brother"
4.Whatever you want to tell a child can be said directly, without any reference to another child
5.Encourage your child to offer his best. Focus on your child's improved skills and her positive interactions with teammates. In the end, your child will be more confident and have healthier relationships with others.

How Countries Use Competitive Advantage

1.China uses cost leadership
2.India started as a low cost provider for skilled, technical, English-speaking workers at a reasonable wage
3.Japan excelled at quality products
4.Germany as precision engineering
5.America's comparative advantage is innovation through attracting world's greatest talents