Small Business - Beating the Competition
by Stuart Livesey
Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s been 11 days since I was in here last … but it’s been a very interesting 11 days. Some of that time I’d love to repeat while others parts of it I hope will never happen again.
My daughter Adrienne … who’s part of our team at Total Website Management has been up here for a week and in our spare time we’ve been talking servers and team management and that’s something Toni, Adrienne and I could do all night 
Toni’s mum became very ill on the weekend and we discovered how depressing the intensive care unit’s waiting room at our local hospital can be and of course there has also been the ongoing work with our regulars plus with a number of new clients who have come across to us from our competitors too.
Picking up work from the competition is something that we’re always a little cautious about doing. This is a small town and we all have to live here so we usually let our reputation for outstanding service attract clients from other web design businesses.
And that’s something that you can do no matter what area of small business that your involved in. Basically all you have to do is let your satisfied customers do the work for you while you set a standard of service that is so far beyond what your competitors are providing that they just can’t catch you.
Of course you’ll need the skills and experience to provide that level of service but if you have them then beating the competition is easy and no matter what they try you’ll still stay well out in front.
And knowing what level of service you will need to provide is simply a matter of benchmarking your business against those of your competitors. For some small businesses the comparison is encouraging but for others making that comparison can be rather difficult when they find that they don’t compare well with the opposition.
