Page 80 - Business Plans that Work A Guide for Small Business

Industry: Zoom Lens on Opportunity • 71

This also shows why
If a university trusts and recommends our service to universities might be moti-
interested students, it conveys quality and diminishes the vated to endorse Lazybones.
perceived risk that our service might lose or damage their
clothes. Universities compete for students and having a laundry service like
Lazybones can be a feature that tilts a student’s decision toward attending that
university.

Competition

The competitive analysis is derived directly from the customer analysis.
Specifically, you have previously identified your market segment and de-
scribed what the customer looks like and what the customer wants. The
key factor leading to the competitive analysis is what the customer wants
in a particular product. These product attributes form a basis of com-
parison against your direct and indirect competitors. A competitive profile
matrix is a useful tool to communicate those attributes and how the com-
petition is currently addressing them. The matrix figure not only creates a
powerful visual catch-point, it conveys information regarding gaps in the
current offerings, setting the stage to describe your competitive advantage
and the basis for your company’s strategy. After a brief introductory para-
graph, the competitive profile matrix should lead the section and be fol-
lowed by text describing the analysis and its implications.
Creating a competitive profile matrix requires understanding of what
the marketplace values; what is often called the key success factors. In
other words, what makes the customer buy one company’s product over
another’s? Think about a restaurant. People often choose to dine in res-
taurants based upon a number of factors, including location, price and
quality of food, atmosphere, and so forth. Considering that you have a
strong understanding of your customer, you should be able to identify
what the key success factors are for your market space. Once you have
the key success factors, you list your competition and your venture in the
matrix and then evaluate how each company fairs in meeting the key suc-
cess factors.
Finding information about your competition can be easy if the com-
pany is public, harder if it is private, and very difficult if the company is
operating in “stealth” mode (it hasn’t yet announced itself to the world).
Most libraries have access to databases that contain a mother lode of in-
formation about publicly traded companies (see Fig. 4.2 for some sample
sources), but privately held companies or those stealth ventures represent