How High Is the Hurdle?

If you ever ran in a track meet and leaped over hurdles, you'll know that the higher the hurdles, the harder it is to get around the track. Your competitors' strengths are like the hurdles in a track. Eventually, you'll have to provide features that match those that make up your competitors' strengths. If that will be hard to do, the hurdles you face are high.

Fortunately, you don't have to leap over all the hurdles at once. You do need to know what those hurdles are, though, so you can plan how to leap over them or run around them. You listed them in your spreadsheet or on your sheet of paper when you were spying on your competitors. Now, you need to extract them and organize them so they'll be easy to remember and consider.

Your 20 Minute Task

If you used a spreadsheet program, open a second tab or start a new spreadsheet. If you used a piece of paper, take out another one. Also, open the spreadsheet you used to record the information about your competitors or take the sheet from the "Competitor Intelligence" file folder.

Look over the strengths you noted for the competitors you found. Choose the one you think is most valuable to your niche. Write it as the first item on your new list.

Continue looking over the strengths, extracting the items in order of their value, and listing them.

When you're done, save the spreadsheet and note its name on the sticky note in your folder or file all your papers in the "Competitor Intelligence" folder.