Quotes & Sayings About Your Competitors

I think it's just the nature of our game that we're friends out here, although we are competitors, we are friends. And you like to see your friend do well, and you sometimes need another pair of eyes. — Steve Stricker

Firstly, we analysis your competitors and then helps you to raise your level by building the most effective website design and optimization which is suitable to your business site. This is a very necessary task to increase the ranking of your website. — Mark Batty

Vanity metrics are the numbers you want to publish on TechCrunch to make your competitors feel bad. — Eric Ries

If your competitors start copying you then you are doing something right! — Jay Baer

Perhaps more than any other sport, golf focuses pressure on the player. There are no time constraints, as there are in other sports. Your competitors are not allowed to hinder you, as they are in other sports. The pressure originates in yourself; it builds from doubts. A two-foot putt on the practice green doesn't spark many doubts. A two-foot putt to win a bet or a tournament or a Masters is another thing entirely. — Joe Posnanski

The number one thing to steal from your competitors: Wisdom. — Seth Godin

Smart recessionary marketing means not waiting for business to return to normal. Instead, you should cash in on this invaluable opportunity your more cautious competitors may be creating for you. If they pull back, your media investment works much harder. — Sarah Carter

As Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spake Zarathustra: "You must be proud of your enemy; then your enemy's successes are also your successes."87 Be proud of your competitors. Just don't follow them. — Eric Schmidt

This is considered almost holy work by farmers and ranchers. Kill off everything you can't eat. Kill off anything that eats what you eat. Kill off anything that doesn't feed what you eat."
"It IS holy work, in Taker culture. The more competitors you destroy, the more humans you can bring into the world, and that makes it just about the holiest work there is. Once you exempt yourself from the law of limited competition, everything in the world except your food and the food of your food becomes an enemy to be exterminated. — Daniel Quinn

Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors - or your colleagues. What have you done lately - this week - to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength? Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait? — Tom Peters

Competitors can never copy the you in your product. — Anonymous

Once the habit is ingrained and you become the starter, the center of the circle, you will find more and more things to notice, to instigate, and to initiate. Momentum builds and you get better at generating it. If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you'll wake up with a list. And as you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised. What might be considered a board-level decision at one of your competitors' companies gets done as a matter of course. What might be reserved for a manager's intervention gets handled at the customer level, saving you time and money (and generating customer joy). This incredibly prosaic idea, the very simple act of initiating, is actually profoundly transformative. Forward motion is a defensible business asset. — Seth Godin

We have become obsessed with what is good about small classrooms and oblivious about what also can be good about large classes. It's a strange thing isn't it, to have an educational philosophy that thinks of the other students in the classroom with your child as competitors for the attention of the teacher and not allies in the adventure of learning. — Malcolm Gladwell

What is your Unique Selling Proposition? What makes you different than your competitors? Wrap your advertising message around that USP and communicate it in a clear and concise manner. — Lynda Resnick

The next great idea for your work will probably not come from watching your competitors, but from taking an insight from an unrelated industry and applying it to your own. — Todd Henry

Does your particular field have a trade journal? These magazines are always looking for copy from industry insiders: Write a good article and you will get your name in front of people who would otherwise never have heard of you. Meet your competitors too. Today's competitor could change jobs and become tomorrow's customer. Make sure he knows you! It all adds up to making sure your name is the one your customers think of when they have a need you can fill. — Ethan M. Rasiel

Use your development time to brief analysts and industry press. Use these influencers as your eyes and ears to let you know what else is being developed by competitors so that you can be the first to market, and don't make the mistake of launching an also-ran product. — Jay Samit

Unless you frame yourself, others will frame you - the media, your enemies, your competitors, your well-meaning friends. — George Lakoff

Big business learned that if you stopped fighting big government, you could profit from it by killing your smaller competitors. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Scout out competitors' websites. Everything your competitors think is important or relevant usually exists on their website. — John Manning

No matter what your reason for wanting to start your own business, developing the foundation is the same. Laying a solid foundation for you business will provide you with a road map to follow as you build your business. As you work through the Start a Business Step-by-Step Workbook you will define the company's mission, decide what business entity is right for your business, name your business, determine the pricing for your products or services, formulate your financial projections, define your competitors, survey consumers regarding your products or services, determine the marketing methods right for your business and more. — Jeanne A. Estes

In the future, it will become increasingly obvious that your competitors are just as clueless as you are. — Scott Adams

On the Internet, there are an unlimited number of competitors. Anybody with a Flip camera is your competition. What makes it even worse is that YouTube is willing to subsidize the cost of your bandwidth. So anybody can create and distribute for free basically, but the real cost is marketing. And that's always the big cost - how do you stand out and what's the cost of standing out? And there's no limit to that cost. — Mark Cuban

Don Keough's (CEO Coca-Cola) 11 Rules on "HOW TO LOSE": 1. Stop taking risks 2. Be content 3. Never deviate from what the founder did 4. Be inflexible 5. Rely totally on research and experts 6. Concentrate on competitors instead of your customers 7. Put yourself - not the customer - first 8. Solve administrative concerns first 9. Let others do your thinking for example, headquarters 10. Rely on T-G-E: "That's Good Enough" and T-N-M-J: "That's Not My Job!" 11. Rationalize slow growth — Donald Keough

The first method is to think across the traditional boundaries of your marketplace to alternatives, not just competitors. — Brian Halligan

Hannibal achieved this great victory not with superior numbers but superior strategy and extraordinary tactical execution. And that's his lesson to us: When faced with superior competitors, use your knowledge of their habits and weaknesses to outsmart them. How can you invert commonplace thinking and outmaneuver your competitors when they're falsely feeling confident? — Anonymous

Study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite. — David Ogilvy

The trouble with competitors' sycophants is they don't know where to put their tongues. Here's a suggestion: Try behind your teeth. With your mouth shut. — Max Hawthorne

Move fast. Speed is one of your main advantages over large competitors. — Sam Altman

Buying market share by hiring your competitors' salespeople does nothing good for your reputation in the industry. Maybe you don't care when you're young and brash, but eventually you learn that reputation is a crucial business asset, worth much more over the long run than a few extra sales. — Norm Brodsky

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it's always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it's hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you'll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero. — Peter Thiel

You're unstoppable not because you're stronger than your challenges/competitors. It's because you're consistent. You won't quit easily!!! — Assegid Habtewold

Second, you need to spread the large amount of information knowledge that you've gained-pooping like an elephant. This means sharing information and discoveries with your fellow employees and occasionally even with your competitors. — Guy Kawasaki

An in-depth, introspective analysis is required. It needs to be objective, candid, and thorough. Good questions, like the following, can help. They may not produce perfectly clear answers, but they are a starting point. (Note that they are from an external perspective to give you some distance from internal biases.) What would our competitors say we do exceptionally well? Where are we dominant in the marketplace? Where do we have high market share? Where have others attempted to compete with us and failed? If we asked members to play "word association" with us, when we say the "XYZ Association" what word or phrase would come immediately to mind? If we asked members to identify the one thing that we do that helps them most, what would they say? What are we not doing that we should be doing that expands on existing strength? Don't allow your association to operate on "pseudo strength." Make sure your strength is real. — Harrison Coerver

In marketing terms, a commodity is an undifferentiated product that is just like its competitors. It isn't usually very innovative, and offers a similar set of features and price point compared to competitive products. In other words, its defining characteristic is its "sameness" compared to other similar products. When a product becomes a commodity, the price that it commands in the marketplace tends to erode. People aren't willing to pay extra for your product. They consider it and those of your competitors to be interchangeable, so no one company has an edge in sales. — Chuck Frey

Listen to your customers, not your competitors. — Joel Spolsky

The first - imitation - merely does enough to keep your competitors in check. It does not create space in the marketplace; all it does is temporarily ensure that the pack of nondifferentiated competitors keeping their doors open will include you. — Scott McKain

For a lot of companies, it's useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe it's better to shoot higher. You don't want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what's possible and how to make the world better. — Larry Page

Communicate. Listen to your customers, associates and competitors. — J. Willard Marriott

If you change the rules of the market, you can be more successful than your competitors. — Max McKeown

Look around your competitors and learn from them.
Look within for your talents and exploit them.
Look back at your failures and learn from them.
Look forward to your successes and reach for them. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Creating change requires innovation: developing new products, creating new sales channels, reducing product development time, customizing products for increasingly smaller market segments. In addition, your company must be able to respond quickly to both anticipated and unanticipated changes created by your competitors and customers. — Jim Highsmith

Be thankful for quality competitors who push you to your limit. — Michael Josephson

The media propagates a message that corporations want, and there's a belittling and mocking of the poor and celebration of wealth. A kind of cutthroat, rapacious capitalism is celebrated on reality television shows where you betray and manipulate and push aside your competitors for fleeting fame and money. These are sick values, but they're disseminated through corporate media in almost every program you watch. — Chris Hedges

REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESS

Before you were born,
And were still too tiny for
The human eye to see,
You won the race for life
From among 250 million competitors.
And yet,
How fast you have forgotten
Your strength,
When your very existence
Is proof of your greatness.
You were born a winner,
A warrior,
One who defied the odds
By surviving the most gruesome
Battle of them all.
And now that you are a giant,
Why do you even doubt victory
Against smaller numbers,
And wider margins?
The only walls that exist,
Are those you have placed in your mind.
And whatever obstacles you conceive,
Exist only because you have forgotten
What you have already
Achieved. — Suzy Kassem

When you're Singapore's leader and your existence depends on performance - extraordinary performance, better than your competitors - when that performance disappears because the system on which it's been based becomes eroded, then you've lost everything... I try to tell the younger generation that and they say the old man is playing the same record, we've heard it all before. I happen to know how we got here and I know how we can unscramble it." - On one freak election result ruining Singapore — Lee Kuan Yew

Why shouldn't you use numeric ids in your URLs? First, your competitors can see just how many auctions you create. Numeric consecutive ids also allow people to write automated spiders to steal your content. It's a window into your database. And finally, words in URLs just look better. (Google "German tank problem" to learn about how serial numbers on German tanks helped the allies win World War II.) — Obie Fernandez

If you're just going to be like everyone else, why are you even doing this? If you merely replicate competitors, there's no point for your existence. Even if you wind up losing, it's better to go down fighting for what you believe in instead of just imitating others. — Jason Fried

If you can't defeat your ego how do you expect to defeat your competitors? — Mark Anthony Peterson

A brand is the unique story that consumers recall when they think of you. This story associates your product with their personal stories, a particular personality, what you promise to solve, and your position relative to your competitors. Your brand is represented by your visual symbols and feeds from multiple conversations where you must participate strategically. — Laura Busche

Sometimes your worst competitors are the ones which are dying because they do stupid things. — John Caudwell

This law ... defines the limits of competition in the community of life. You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war. — Daniel Quinn

Today's opponents can be your allies tomorrow. And today's allies can be tomorrow's opponents. — Suzy Kassem

What are you doing at the moment? How does that compare to your competitors? What do you want to achieve? How can you create something people want? — Max McKeown

You have to respect all your competitors. — Thorsten Heins

And so if your competitors aren't growing, if there isn't a competitive reason to grow, and you want focus and discipline to add customers to existing stores, you adjust your strategy. — Jim Cantalupo

The status quo is not your friend; in a competitive, down economy, the absence of change means death. Those who coast with current best practices may enjoy a period of time where it works. But if you don't reinvent yourself, your competitors will do it for you. — Anonymous

Benchmark your performance against your best competitors. Think how you can beat them next time. — Brian Tracy

You first compete with yourself before competing against others; if you cannot beat your last best result, do not be surprised if it seems difficult to compete against external competitors. — Archibald Marwizi

Work with your competitors when the interest of the community and planet are at stake. — Simon Mainwaring

Do you understand the real reason why your customers choose your products or services? Or why they choose something else instead? How do your products or services help your customers to make progress in their lives? In which circumstances are they trying to make that progress? What are the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of this progress? What is competing with your products and services to address these jobs? Are there competitors outside of those included in the traditional view of your industry? — Clayton M Christensen

I do remember when I first went into politics, one of my competitors asked me, 'Well, Jenny Shipley, who's looking after your children?' I don't think many of my male colleagues have faced a similar question. — Jenny Shipley

In business, there is nothing more valuable than a technical advantage your competitors don't understand. In business, as in war, surprise is worth as much as force. — Paul Graham

Know the moment when to work diligently. Even more important, know the moment when not to work, but to relax and play instead. This will not only benefit you immensely, but also will astonish your friends and competitors. — Ernie J Zelinski

You only stay in front by coming up with ideas your new competitors haven't thought of yet. — Kevin Harrington

If you know what your customers want, the other aspect to know is what are your competitors doing? — Shawn Casemore

Whatever you and your team decide your new brand will stand for, deliver on that promise. That's the only way you'll ever control your brand. And beware: brands always mean something. If you don't define what the brand means, your competitors will. — Richard Branson

Science and technology are the engines of prosperity. Of course, one is free to ignore science and technology, but only at your peril. The world does not stand still because you are reading a religious text. If you do not master the latest in science and technology, then your competitors will. — Michio Kaku

Short-term performance envy causes many of the shortcomings that lock most investors into a perpetual cycle of underachievement. Watch your competitors not out of jealousy but out of respect and focus your efforts not on replicating others' portfolios but on looking for opportunities where they are not. The only way for investors to significantly outperform is to periodically stand far apart from the crowd, something few are willing, or able, to do. — Seth Klarman

If you are seizing on a new business opportunity, deliberately move your customers' expectations up a few notches and consistently over-deliver on your promises - you will leave your competitors struggling to catch up. — Richard Branson

I wasn't running toward the theater but running away from the sporting goods store. Of course now that I'm selling spaghetti sauce (with Newman's Own), I begin to understand the romance of business.. the allure of being the biggest fish in the pond and the juice you get from beating out your competitors. — Paul Newman

You'll sacrifice a lot of things in the early part of your career to be successful, but to be ahead of your competitors, you have to work hard. — Ivan Glasenberg

I often think of a quote from entrepreneur Jim Rohn: 'You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.' Surround yourself with people who are doing interesting things, who are thinking interesting thoughts, who challenge you to be better, and who come from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences. That, combined with appropriate moments of 'me' time, provides the perfect breeding ground for great ideas. And whatever you do, don't get hung up on what competitors are doing. Be aware of what's going on in the industry, but don't let it dictate your own creative process. — Alexis Ohanian

Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one's fellow man ... that's what competition is all about: "outpleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers. — Walter E. Williams

Today's partners can be your competitors tomorrow. And today's competitors can be your partners tomorrow. — Suzy Kassem

Learn as much as you can about your proposed business. Ask questions. Join industry associations. Study successful competitors carefully. — Paul Clitheroe

For the most part, the best opportunities now lie where your competitors have yet to establish themselves, not where they're already entrenched. Microsoft is struggling to adapt to that new reality. — Paul Allen

In a commodity business, it's very hard to be smarter than your dumbest competitor. — Warren Buffett

We're stronger and braver TOGETHER. Do not let this world and this narcissistic culture make competitors out of the very people who are meant to be your comrades in arms. — Beth Moore

If you give a man a gift because you hope he will award a particular contract to you, you are obviously demonstrating a lack of confidence in your ability to make your normal services profitable to him. And if you're doing it because your competitors are, then you're suggesting that the prospect really isn't a very ideal customer. — Harry Browne

The standard to compare your software to is what it could be, not what your current competitors happen to have. — Paul Graham

When you are in a business, you must join associations, (both local and international), so that you can exchange ideas, with people from the same industry, including your competitors. This is how you "benchmark". Before you dash off to implement something, try and find out what others have done, or not done This is really how you should be using tools like the Internet. — Strive Masiyiwa

Now if you go exactly where your competitors are, you're dead. — Thorsten Heins

When he came to fear and detest you, it was worse. He ordered three hits on you that I know of."
Roarke continued to stroll. "There were five, actually."
"Why didn't you ever retaliate?"
"I don't need the blood of my competitors. Or even my enemies. He was, for some years, nothing to me. But he should never have touched my wife. I'd have done him for that, if you're interested. For putting a mark on her."
"You didn't, and he lives."
"Because doing so would've put another mark on her, as that's who she is."
"You let him live to protect your wife?"
Roarke paused, looked Alex in the face. "If you think the lieutenant needs protection, mine or anyone's, you've severely misjudged her. I let him live out of respect to her. And I became convinced living, as he is condemned to live now, was worse than death. — J.D. Robb

Competitive secrets: Why should you tell your competitors what you're doing? Won't it just help them? Oddly enough, most competitors don't really compete. For example, there are very good books on how to build a brand, yet most companies don't develop their brand. So most of your competitors won't use your secrets. You're trying to reach your customers, and they can tell the difference between leaders and followers. By standing out, you attract customers. — Andreas Ramos

If you wanted to control the nation's manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful SOCIALIST government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors. If you wanted a national monopoly, you must control a national socialist government. If you want a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about. "Communism" is not a movement of the downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world ... — Gary Allen

There is no age, height, or weight requirement to skate. It is good exercise no matter what your age is. If you want to be competitive, most start young. But, I practice with many adult competitors. — Nancy Kerrigan

If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business. — Lee Kuan Yew

She brought the bite to her mouth and chewed slowly, as if savoring the sweet. But he knew better. She was stalling. Using the tart as an excuse to occupy her mouth so she couldn't answer his questions. Darius tugged her plate out of reach before she could stab a second bite. "Nicole." His use of her given name had the desired effect. Her chin jerked up and her eyes widened as she scanned his face. "Your safety is not a trifling matter." The urge to cover her hand with his speared through him, but he resisted, not knowing how she'd interpret such a gesture. Unsure, as well, how he'd want her to interpret it. "While you are at Oakhaven, you are under my protection. Whatever you are running away from - " "I'm not running away." Her eyes sparked, and she visibly bristled as if he'd offended her. "I'm simply taking care of an . . . an errand for my father. It requires a bit of secrecy, is all, and there are competitors who wish to . . . interfere. — Karen Witemeyer

No matter how senior you get in an organization, no matter how well you're perceived to be doing, your job is never done. Every day, you get up and the world is changing; your customers are expecting more from you. Your competitors are putting pressure on you by doing more and trying to beat you here and beat you there. — Abigail Johnson

Link to your competitors and say nice things about them. Remember, you're part of an industry. — Robert Scoble

Trying to do what your competitors are doing but basically a little bit better is probably not going to be the winning strategy. The problem is finding what your competitors wouldn't even consider doing. — Jamais Cascio

You can't really innovate for the past (your offering won't be innovative and will be beaten easily by competitors). If you innovate for the future, then adoption will be slow until customers become ready. The trick is to task your insights team to provide guidance for the future present. — Braden Kelley

Before you were born, and were still too tiny for the human eye to see, you won the race for life from among 250 million competitors. And yet, how fast you have forgotten your strength, when your very existence is proof of your greatness. — Suzy Kassem

The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage. — Arie De Geus

In industries where a lot of competitors are selling the same product - mangoes, gasoline, DVD players - price is the easiest way to distinguish yourself. The hope is that if you cut prices enough you can increase your market share, and even your profits. But this works only if your competitors won't, or can't, follow suit. — James Surowiecki

People will envy you to the extent that you start out with a group of people and you rise up the organization faster than them. Get over what your peers are thinking about you because your peers are also your competitors. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

Give users what they actually want, not what they say they want. And whatever you do, don't give them new features just because your competitors have them! — Kathy Sierra

Your most dangerous competitors are those that are most like you. — Bruce Henderson

If critics and competitors can't match your results, they will often denigrate the way you achieve them. Fast, intuitive types are called lazy. Dedicated burners of the midnight oil are called obsessed. And while it's obviously not a bad idea to hear and consider the opinions of others, you should be suspicious when these criticisms emerge right on the heels of success. — Garry Kasparov