It is more important to surpass yourself than to "roll" your opponent.

In the past two years, the company has been unable to survive, and most enterprises have no way to increase. Many bosses began to ponder a question: how can we "crush" competitors to survive?

Commercial competition is nothing more than two modes:

What kind of competition mode to adopt is determined by the nature of the industry, the needs of users and the development of technology, and there is no distinction between advantages and disadvantages.

However, when the decision-maker of a company begins to believe that he and his competitors must have a life-and-death relationship, your enterprise will be in danger.

If you just want to beat your competitors, your enterprise will always struggle in the low-level business competition, and new competitors at the same level will always find you.

There are only three strategic advantages we know: total cost leading advantage, differentiation advantage and concentration advantage.

How to understand these three strategic advantages?

Leading the total cost means that you have the lowest cost in the industry, so the price of your products and services can be lower than that of your competitors.

Differentiation advantage means that you have unique added value of products.

For example, your service can make customers who consume 10 yuan have the experience of consuming 20 yuan, or the value and significance attached to your product can't be given by other competing products, so these are your differences.

The focus strategy is to make a hole, do a good job in subdivision, and ride the dust on the track of your choice.

Taking mobile phone brands as an example, Xiaomi adopts a total cost leading strategy, while Apple adopts a differentiated strategy of system ecologicalization and increasing added value.

Nokia, which lost the smart phone market, relied on the function machine on the mobile phone track, which is the kind of mobile phone that can only make calls and send text messages. This is a centralized strategy.

Everyone knows the quality of Nokia's functional machines. Its main markets are the elderly and primary school students in underdeveloped areas around the world and at home. It has transformed its past strategic advantages into today's strategic advantages, so Nokia has not been completely eliminated by cruel industry competition.

The past 20 years have witnessed the rapid progress of China's software development industry, but our innovation, service and human efficiency are still not as good as those of our European and American counterparts, and even we have been repeatedly defeated by Indian companies in international bidding.

Is it because we programmers don't work hard enough?

Is it because the technical level of our industry is not high?

Is it because we don't meet international standards?

Actually, it's not.

There is an "Indian programmer joke" that Indian programmers have to spend two weeks communicating with customers, and all the details should be carefully checked. The two sides signed a contract with particularly detailed terms before starting work.

The same project was handed over to a programmer in China, and the prototype of the APP was given to you in two weeks.

In the 20 years with the fastest development of Internet industry in China, we all think that the fast and unbreakable style of China programmers is the absolute advantage brought by low cost.

But at that time, our industry was still immature, and customers were not quite sure what they wanted. I often communicate with customers for a long time, thinking that I understand customer needs, but after the first edition was made, it was completely overturned.

Because everyone's communication is completely blind, China programmers have simply developed a habit of doing it first and making changes while doing it.

Today, most of our industries have exhausted their dividends and reached the peak of growth. Our customers are also fully educated, not only knowing the hidden rules of the industry, but also knowing what they want and don't want.

Then we found that the programmer's salary is rising, the RMB exchange rate is rising, and the operating cost of enterprises is rising. Bosses simply cannot afford the waste of manpower caused by poor communication.

The advantages of the past have formed a toxic industry atmosphere, which not only reduces the motivation of enterprises to further refine management, threatens the survival of many small companies, but also compresses the development space of the whole industry.

This is the hidden trap in the advantage.

The "advantages" of any industry are constantly changing with the changes of the market.

Yesterday's advantage is not only today's advantage, but may even become tomorrow's death hole.

So what should we do?

The best response is to keep a mentality of "eating in the bowl, watching in the pot and thinking on the ground".

Corporate decision-makers are eating past dividends and looking at current industry trends, always thinking about how to turn their existing resources and experience into future competitive advantages.

So how can we turn resources and experience into competitive advantages of enterprises?

Here I recommend a theoretical tool called "Five Forces Model" for your reference only.

Judging the current industry prospect and the competitiveness of enterprise strategy and entrepreneurial projects in this industry can be measured by the conditional elements in the "five-force model".

The core of the five-force model is that there are five forces in an industry, and * * * determines the intensity of competition in the industry and the ability of companies in the industry to maintain high returns.

(1) Competition intensity of existing competitors.

② upstream bargaining power

③ downstream bargaining power

(4) the threat of new entrants

⑤ The threat of substitutes

The first strength, the competition intensity of existing competitors, is whether your industry is currently the Red Sea or the Blue Ocean, and the industry concentration is not high. Is there an "ecological empire" where a group like Ali, Tencent and Amazon occupy a very high market share?

However, in such a huge market as China, when evaluating the competitive strength of competitors, it is more important whether their business model is similar to your strategy, and the scale of the enterprise is not so important.

Why are Meituan and Hungry seeking innovation and change in recent years, trying to cross the border in the original takeaway format?

Because their business models are too similar, vicious competition is easy to appear in the process of expansion.

Second, the upstream bargaining power is whether the enterprise can reduce the cost from the supply chain and middlemen, so that the price of raw materials, equipment, labor and transportation costs are lower.

Third, the downstream bargaining power is the problem of enterprise pricing power.

The power of pricing depends on whether your product belongs to the buyer's market or the seller's market.

For example, mass consumer goods is a buyer's market, and the downstream bargaining power of retail enterprises is very low, so the pricing power is low. Chip industry is a seller's market, with very high bargaining power and high pricing power.

Fourth, the threat of new entrants depends on whether the entry threshold of your industry is high enough and whether your own enterprise has a moat in technology or products.

Why can Pinduoduo cut out a large market share in the e-commerce field dominated by Taobao and JD.COM? In fact, it is because the barriers to entry in the field of large consumption are actually not high.

In the fields of biopharmaceuticals, cutting-edge technology, aerospace, etc., the players inside may not be able to count with both hands, but the threshold of technology and scale is stuck there, which makes most people far behind.

The last force of Porter's five forces, the threat of substitutes, is also the condition to look at the industry threshold. But in addition to the added value of technology and products, the substitutes introduced by competitors can also rely on the power of capital.

The five-force model is briefly introduced. Let's use a case to tell you how to use Porter's Five Forces flexibly to analyze the competitive advantage of the industry.

Everyone knows that Xuchang's "Fat Donglai" is a sea fishing in the supermarket industry. The fundamental reason why its service and corporate culture are so powerful is that the wages and benefits given by enterprises to employees are the highest in the local area.

When employees feel the sincerity of the boss, they will naturally provide the best service and develop the best values.

Obviously, Fat Donglai adopted a differentiated strategy, which not only attached importance to user value and psychological satisfaction, but also made a wave of low-cost and effective word-of-mouth marketing.

Compared with being a friend with total cost advantage, Fat Donglai, who desperately develops differentiated advantages, is very competitive in this region;

The high added value of brands and services makes it have the downstream bargaining power that is rare in the supermarket industry;

At the same time, the threat of new entrants to Pang Donglai is limited, because Pang Donglai has set a high service added value threshold in Henan, which is difficult for new players to surpass.

It is generally recognized that the supermarket industry generally adopts the total cost leading strategy, but Feidong must adopt the differentiation strategy.

The added value of your services and values can make customers feel satisfied with 20 yuan by spending 10 yuan, and you will change the supermarket format in this area, and you will become a game changer in ten miles and eight townships.

What is a game changer? That is, I don't play the games dominated by you, I only play the games dominated by me.

However, with Feidong's differentiated competitiveness, why not expand outward and why not come to Guangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen?

First of all, the salary and benefits from Pangdong have no advantage in first-and second-tier cities. Once this competitiveness is lost, the service and corporate culture that Fat Donglai is proud of will be greatly reduced.

Secondly, first-tier cities also have competitors with diversified formats, such as Boxma Xiansheng, Sam member stores and COSTCO. The red brands of various road networks are fighting each other, and the differentiation strategies are full of tricks. It's hard to say whether Fat Donglai can withstand such high-intensity competition.

As for the innovative modes of various Internet platforms, cross-border gameplay and subsidies for burning money, not to mention.

In this case, to borrow the classic line from Let the Bullets Fly is: Bad luck? You are new here!

You know, strategy is never static. All strategic advantages are limited by the times and regions, and also fluctuate according to industry trends.

If you don't follow the general trend of the industry, you will easily fall into the misunderstanding of competition.

The most common misunderstanding of competition is that when its own cost advantage is not high, it is actually impossible to maintain the lowest price in the industry, burning money makes a strategy of leading the total cost, trying to burn competitors by capital and scale.

In the past, when the demographic dividend and the low-cost labor dividend were still there, some platforms did achieve this strategy. However, the grand occasion of the subsidy war, at least for the consumer industry, is only a short development window. If you miss it, you will never come back.

What's more, those enterprises that burn their competitors first and raise the entry threshold of the industry are often the initiators of breaking the industry rules and leading to vicious competition.

Just like the take-away platform and e-commerce platform, although they have completed the monopoly, they have been strongly condemned by public opinion and even triggered policy restrictions because of a series of Sao operations that raise prices and save costs.

Although competition is everywhere, the greatest competitiveness must come from our own advantages, not the disadvantages of our opponents.

We can create our own advantages, but we can't create our opponents' disadvantages by killing one thousand and losing eight hundred.

Once the competition turns into hand-to-hand combat, or both sides compete for capital, it is likely that the final outcome will be both sides lose.

In fact, the bottom line of business competition is very simple, that is, let yourself live and let others live.

Most entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in the industry understand this truth, and the whole industry can flourish.

Today, many people say that we should cheer up and face the management dilemma again.

In this regard, a senior investor is right:

What is the most terrible thing in life? At first, it was the peak, then it went downhill and the mentality collapsed.

It is also a truth to make a business or career choice.

I am most afraid of success at the beginning. I am most afraid that everything I have done before is smooth sailing, because the smoother it is, the easier it is for decision makers to fall into the interest trap.

The more you take the lead in the past rules of the game, the easier it is to get carried away and challenge others' rules instead of establishing your own.

Re-heated industries also have latent crises, and cold winters also have opportunities for breeding.

The disappearance of the old dividend and the arrival of the new dividend are only the inevitability of commercial development.

People who always keep in mind the change of wind direction can seize the opportunity to stand at the peak of the trend in repeated business cycles.

& lt& lt& lt study notes for the president's yeast class.