Diamond Cuts Diamond: A Competitor/Leader Based Approach To Strategies

It makes sense right, you can cut diamond by diamond what this famous adage explains is an all time truth. But then I wonder why we overlook such truths, especially when it comes to devising strategy for our organizations.

Okay enough of all those confusing and semi senseless theories that talks about customers
, market, demographics etc based strategies to be successful, to attain the long term goals and objectives I just wonder why don’t they just go for the straight approach, most of organizations approach to strategy is like “hey mate whats your good name” and the other(organization) responds in this manner “ well I belong to America and am American citizen, I live in New York, my date of birth is …. My name is Allen” this is weird and that’s how most of the organizations devise their strategies they consider so many things and get through so many things to devise strategy while at the same time they can just say “Allen” but they won’t.

Now you guys would be probably asking what the heck I am talking about!! Well my approach don’t over look the whole America, New York, date of birth thing but the thing is we should give everything its due explanation and importance on its due time.

I believe the strategist should focus on key competitors or leader of its target market, it should be his prime focus and devise strategy on basis of his competitors or market leader. Really your competitor is just about SWOT/PESTEL analysis and then doing your own thing that’s it ?!!.  Now how would he/she suppose to do that? Well what are you waiting for let’s get to it.

Competitor Based Strategy:

 

Step one: Research focus

First your whole research should be focused on your competitors and market leader as they are the guys who satisfy who sell and who eats up your piece of cake. You don’t need to focus your research on something else as that would be waste of a lot of time. I know you will come to the same results but after a good time. But once you focus on your competitors/market leader that means you’re covering your customer aspect, market aspect, and demographic aspect so and so forth.

 

Step two: Collect and assess the insights gained

Now when you focus all your exploration on your key competitors or market leader you will eventually start gaining insights about product, about related services, marketing strategy, product strategy, overall strategy etc.

 

Step three: Identify the patterns

Now gaining insights and assessing them would help you in identifying certain patterns that makes the bulk of their different strategies. Btw you don’t need to wait for real time strategies or new product strategies to identify their strategies patterns rather just dig out the past of your competitors/leader and learn from it, assess it, collect the rich insights and connect the dots as famous quote by Denis Waitely “Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now” and by understanding the past of your competitors/market leader you can clearly identify its Achilles heel, Its strengths. As this reminds me of another famous quote by Oscar Wilde “One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged”.

Look at Apple after the big hit back in 2007 seven of “Jesus Phone” it couldn’t keep the Asian doctor away “Samsung” in the beginning it was about class, slickness, thinness, camera, image quality, tons of new features that made the iphone flagship a big hit for Apple but coming down through years Apple seems to have lost focus not just that but its brand worth according to Brandz increased only 1% in current year (2013).

What all these seems to indicate is Asian doctor clearly did perfect anatomy of the market leader and came with his own Anti iphone drug that he improved over the years finally beating Apple in 2013 with one of kind Galaxy S4 that has all that Apple used to capture market, to compete, to lead like Jelly Bean 4.1.2 for iOS, Eye scroll to scroll down Siri, Eye pause and in specifications it out done iphone 5 at many levels. In a nutshell Galaxy S4 has beaten iphone5 in sales in America according to Timesof India now you be the judge (Remember fella’s that America is Apple stronghold). Now that news suggests and indicates a lot.

 

Step 4: Devising counter patterns/Strategies

Now based on identified patterns in various strategies devise counter patterns. Now that’s up to you how you do it, in my book there are no hard and fast rules to develop strategy as far as the approach is sensible not like the one I mentioned in the beginning.  

To me, if I was running Samsung I would have put the whole thing in front of my R&D that this is what Apple is doing in its product and you got counter these and these key patterns in their product strategy and then next I would have gathered my marketing team to work on this and this part of our marketing strategy to develop counter patterns to Apple marketing patterns so on and so forth.

And that’s it that’s what I call “Diamond cuts Diamond” pretty nailed it right? That’s your competitors based strategy.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is your strategies should be based on your competitors/market leader and if you are the leader than you have the luxury of doing “American, New York, date of birth” thing ;p.