Sun Tzu: Your competitor is around the corner what you must do?

Grand strategist ever to live, Sun Tzu gives nuggets of advice on strategy in easy to understand idiom. When you are faced with a new and strong competitor around the corner how you must proceed. Sun Tzu guides you:

If you wait it out thinking that the competitor would move away without fight to finish you are just day-dreaming.  By remaining in friendly terms and talking to you on building relationship he is practising classic deception. First and foremost you must do what Sun Tzu advises: In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed. That is concealing your intention, plan and business strategy. Let him grope in the dark. Like in war business cannot conceal its capabilities. None the less, a firm is always advised to keep its intention unknown to competitors.

Fighting straightaway by cornering the competitor is of no avail. Because Sun Tzu says: If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. You have to unnecessarily spend time and labour in keeping your competitor under check 24/7 and 360 days. But at the same time if you wait till you can garner sufficient resources to have frontal attack on a future date you are committing hara-kiri. As Sun Tzu tells: If you set a fully equipped army in march in order to snatch an advantage, the chances are that you will be too late. So you have to find via-media that slowly and steadily destroys the competitor.

How can do this? You must simply tweak your strategy so that the enemy is placed in an un-favourable situation and you get a favourable situation. For example, assume both you and competitor use a key supplier on critical material. You sign-up with this key supplier on exclusive, priority and favourable terms secretly. This classic move is given to you by Sun Tzu when he commands: By altering his arrangements and changing his plans, he keeps the enemy without definite knowledge.

Now that you have got at the jugular vein of the competitor, expand your sales by engaging in marketing campaign extolling your product and bring substitutes products including the one supplied by the competitor under mild rebuke.

Now the balls are set rolling. Be in your elements, maintain composure pretend that everything is normal with you. Gleefully remember what Sun Tzu raps on your shoulder: Disciplined and calm, to await the appearance of disorder and hubbub amongst the enemy: this is the art of retaining self-possession.

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist