Never underestimate your opponent

You have a superior product; you have a loyal customer base; your sales growth is tremendous for the last couple of years. While you are basking in glory you get a knock on the door. A new competitor has just appeared out of the blue. He is spreading his wings in the same product and the market is looking at him with awe:

Anyone in your position will dismiss the new entrant as out of the town guy and the news consigned to the waste bin. You are not going to that. Because you know that in business strategy the first lesson you learned during your MBA programme is never underestimate your opponent.

True, you have a superior product. But that does not shut the door for a new and much improved product being unveiled by incoming opponent. The cardinal truth is that you have a guy out there to compete in your own field of expertise. That must sink-in before you undertake counter measures.  

In facing this adversary you have to treat him as equal as or even higher than you in terms of technology adopted and business manoeuvre used in the current campaign. Once you give higher marks to your adversary you are realist in the sense that you expect new entrant to fight you out with tenacity and enthusiasm. He may be new but not a green horn. He may have track record in unveiling winning products elsewhere in business arena.

Now you are getting ready to face the battle with much confidence yet in cool manner because you have overestimated the opponent and under estimated you. This mind-set allows you to concentrate on two areas: capacity and capability. More than quantum and quality in the above areas you must develop way and style of using these. Once you reach the level of 2 to 1 in your favour in terms of both capacity and capability you tend to improve your combat skill. What is required now is brilliant business manoeuvres from your side.

One such manoeuvre is not to take small picture but to take big one where several issues are intertwined. Customer care, after-sales service, giving off over the shelf discount, no question asked full refund if customer returns goods, being ready to part-exchange old product with newer one or exchange returning product with something else are some of the brass tactics involved in this manoeuvre.

In sum, you are not going to mount frontal attack on the product or the opponent but go for flank-attack manoeuvre that possibly bleed the opponent and erode effectiveness of his sales campaign.  Sports footwear manufacturers such as Adidas and Puma are experts in flanking business manoeuvre!   

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

 

 

Being underestimated is best business strategy

Projecting strong image is good provided that, your competitors are weak and are not resorting to business warfare. When the competition is stiff and you are one of the second rung players your business strategist advises you to play the underdog card. That is to allow your opponents to underestimate you:

Being underestimated has several virtues in the field of business strategy; the most important is that your real strength has been covered by canvas so that nobody realizes what you are and what you are up to. Opponents in the market think that you are terribly weak, you cannot mount challenge to them, and you are just a simpleton who can be brushed aside.  

There are two scenarios that could happen: one is a significant opponent wants to maul you down and come out with an offensive to take out your market share. He rushes in unprepared. As you have the capacity to forestall it, you mount a counter attack that makes his marketing men reeling for cover and subsequently finished off in no time. In this case your hidden talents have done the work for you.

Second scenario is that a significant competitor lowers his guard and slackens his concentration over you assuming that you are no longer posing any threat to him in the market place. Later you get wind that few in the management team are quitting to form new business. Promptly you size up and make a surprise offensive against his business strategy in one go that ends in devastating defeat for him.

Being under estimated is good for the weak as well as the strong. If your business is lower in the pecking order, in terms of market acceptance, then you can feign as strong to wade off any take-over bid. In case you are strong, but pose as a weakling then your major competitor considering you as such encroach into your market slice and be beaten in due course. 

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

 

Making smart business manoeuvre

Manoeuvre is defined as a set of actions performed with skill and care to achieve limited objective in the short term yet to obtain vantage position in the long term. How to do that? 

In business and warfare you have got to out-smart your competitor and opponent at a given moment where the chips are either in favour of the counter party or equal to both you and the other. In military terms it is a planned and controlled movement in operations intending to lock-in the opponent in an uncomfortable situation leading towards either ending in stalemate or partial defeat of the enemy.

Business is no killing field, therefore manoeuvre here is a well thought of move that has elements such as surprise, speed, secrecy and smartness built in along with characteristic shrewdness. It can take the form stratagem or tactics.

Stratagem basically combines both strategy and tactics and often dubbed as hybrid. Nearly one –third of its adoption is in relation to strategy while the balance tow-third relates to tactics. Put it other way, the intention is strategic whereas its operation is tactical. In stratagem you use deception, so that you get competitive advantage in the present situation. Apple combined computer software with mobile telecommunication to bring out iPhone that served both needs of the customers.

Tactical manoeuvre, on the other hand, is to take action steps at specific time, place and situation that bring about a reversal of fortune for the opponent and enhance your position in the competitive matrix. Here more than deception it is techniques, methods, procedure carried out with finesse and flexibility brings out the intended outcome. Good example is the reduction of working hours adopted in motor companies during the post-war period in America that boosted productivity of labour resulting in immense profits.  

 

Cheers! 

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

 

 

Five options for managing business conflict

When business competition turns ugly it gets into conflict situation. Both parties throw caution to the wind and take the conflict to the serious level of exchanging expletives to body blows to say it figuratively. Conflicts are indeed unavoidable where parties compete for one- upmanship. Here are five options available to business strategist for managing business conflict:

1. Confrontation: Sleep walking towards confrontation is the worst thing that can happen. It starts with one party upping the ante when there is equilibrium prevailing in the market between him and another. Confrontation need not be a direct one but can take several forms of indirect offensive. Colluding with the enemy of one’s opponent following the edict “the enemy of your enemy is friend” is done ostensibly to enrage the competitor who will surely consider it as an affront. 

2. Avoidance: This option is recommended when your firm is not strong enough to take up the cudgel now or in near future. Perhaps avoidance is the best medicine to be used with an opponent who is a gorilla in the market place lest you get pulverized under his feet. Even in the case opponent and you are at same level in terms of strength and capacity, avoidance helps you to postpone the D-day to sometime later. 

3. Cooperation: If the competitor is not seeking a major offensive against your firm but a kind of warning to be followed up with a surgical strike on your market standing, then it would be better to send message of conciliation stressing upon the fact the both can cooperate in solving mutual issues and work for the betterment of common interest.

4. Compromise:  When your firm is strong in terms of one area say, production but weak in another area say marketing while opponent is strong equally in both sectors then it is advisable to make compromise. You can draw redline in the production side that opponent must not cross and you undertake not to threaten his marketing share.

5. Accommodation: The best option always remains as “live and let live”. Here your firm and the opponent can declare truce and discuss all matters over the table. Instead of bellowing “all options are on the table” you must bring forth patience and go along with the opponent in his own game. Time to come the opponent might weaken and be flippant regarding challenging you. Sun Tzu said succinctly: “If you wait by the river long enough, bodies of your enemy float by”.

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

 

 

 

Three lessons from business stratagem: Loot from burning house

Chinese 36 stratagem is well-known. You can draw practical lessons from these stratagems. Loot from burning house is one such stratagem that is vitally important to business strategist. Here are three lessons for him: 

Lesson one

When waging business warfare, the first edict to be followed is “hit the enemy when he is down”. Generally enemy gets into bottom when faced with internal problems that may not appear as dangerous at first sight but turn out to be much more acute as these cannot be easily isolated and rectified. The firm is put on fire fighting mood forever. Consequently, it dampens enthusiasm of top management, so to speak. Therefore the best time to attack opponent is when his internal structure is in chaotic condition. Before that you must gather info profile of the chief trouble makers inside a firm and their needs and aspirations.

Lesson two

If the enemy does not have internal trouble spots but only has challenges from outside then your offensive must undergo change. You do not attack directly but allow him to be ensnared by other enemies hovering outside. Create issues between the opponent and his own competitors. Let him roil in fighting them first. Sun Tzu opines, “When your enemy is exhausted and his resources are spent fighting his opponents it is time to move and take advantage of his troubles”

Lesson three

When an enemy has both internal and external issues at hand that, he is unable to grapple with; you have got a golden opportunity to finish him off sans mercy. The enemy is in deep crisis as troubles mount every day and everywhere. As a strong party you have wherewithal to crush him as he cannot put forward a united front to face your onslaught. The good example was the US motor industry plagued by internal troubles during 1970s, had to face oil crisis as well. The double whammy was so damaging due to their manufacturing preference for “gas guzzlers”. Japanese car manufacturers led by Toyota made short work of them within no time by bringing out models that are energy efficient and price wise cheaper too.

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

 

 

 

Posturing is good, but you must follow it up with positioning

In business warfare, competitors are at the door ready to throttle your neck. You cannot shoo them away. So the option is for you to do a threatening posture. How long this can last?

As you are aware posturing is time bound. By using threat or announcing that you will make counter strike against opponents you get only temporary respite. There are two ways to do posturing: one that attempts to impress them that you are serious in hitting back; second that tries to mislead them that attacking you will spell doom for them. Whatever you do, you are gaining little time before you make your final move.  

Posturing has a short shelf life. Your next level is to opt for positioning. This is done in three ways: place, product or brand. All these must be combined in a business strategy that gives you competitive advantage, such that your competitors will think twice before attacking you, next time around.

Select one major market place where you can do well and where there is less competition. Once selected the place you have to come out with value proposition that understands specific needs of customers and a solution by way of an excellent product. At the risk of repetition I must tell you the area you have selected has little competition or competitors already there are not ready with a suitable value proposition similar to yours.

Your product strategy must take into count cost leadership, quality leadership and pricing leadership all of them present in a basket of one or more products that convey to the customers that:

a) They are getting value for money

b) They have not got any alternatives in the market for products with similar features

Finally, you have to take competition to the next level that is to build an image of your product along with the name associated with it. Here comes the aspect of branding. The ultimate success of a firm is not that its products are excellent but these products are associated with a name and identity of a brand that imprints in the minds of customers notions such as superior quality, seamless techno features, reliability, utility value along with remarkable satisfaction in using products associated with that brand!

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist

 

 

Four ways how weak can beat strong

Can this be ever done, weak defeating strong in the market where competition is raging as business warfare? Yes it is, to believe master strategist Sun Tzu. From his celebrated book “Art of War” I have gleaned just four ways in getting the better of your fiercest competitor:

1. Arrive early into the market where competition is taking place, but do not open any front. Sun Tzu says: “Those who arrive in the battle field early will have the time to rest and get ready for the coming battle”. It is not just simple arrival but with a purpose of knowing the terrain, how nature works in the terrain and the right time to engage with opponent. By extension, firms that wish to enter market should do thorough preparation before getting in so that the position is defensible. 

2. Encourage competitor to waste his time and resources in futile ventures before he finds your niche market where you have grown remarkably well un-noticed by competitors in general and the strongest amongst them in particular. When it dawns on the strong you are placed snugly, he rushes. Intervenes Sun Tzu ‘Those who arrive into battle late do so after exhaustion”.  An exhausted opponent is easy to beat should he try to come head-on with your firm. 

3.  Run the opponent around; wear his patience thin. Keep your front line ready but in relaxed manner whereas competitor is in high degree of tension at the same time with depleted energy. Opines Sun Tzu “The one who is skilled in warfare, forces his enemy to encounter much hardship before coming for him; while he awaits in ease”.

4.  Bring pressure on your competitor by using the techniques of random attack, sniffing attack by capturing network or data, signalling major hostility that fizzles out in no time. These measures erode mental power of the competitor who rambles all over in irritation. Sun Tzu says: “Attack the enemy when he is in low spirit, exhausted, confused and in chaotic moment”. Even Atlas in Greek Mythology can become tired if he is placed in such a situation.

Put it in lighter manner these four ways can be summed up tersely by one of the Chinese “36 stratagem” that goes as “Await for the exhausted enemy at your ease"!  

 

Cheers!

 

Muthu Ashraff Rajulu

Business Strategist

Mobile: + 94 777 265677

E-mail:   cosmicgems@gmail.com

Blog:   Business Strategist