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Choose to Lead:Lead the Competition
by Jim Shoff (Jim's bio)
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In his 1988 New York Times bestseller "Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive", Harvey Mackay includes a wonderful tool to help business professionals understand their customers. The Mackay 66 is a list of 66 questions about your customer that will insure you have the information you need to better understand them and their needs. These questions include basic questions about who and what and more detailed questions about likes and dislikes. The most interesting question of all is question 66, "Does your competitor have better answers to the above questions than you have?"
That is wonderful insight into understanding your competition. Though there are no doubt times when a competitor may have a better product and a lower price that doesn't mean they have a better relationship with the customer. The true success that most people obtain comes from having superior relationships.
Relationships are built over time and come out of a sincere attempt to get to know and understand the other person. No relationship ever succeeds when it is all one sided. Mackay would lead you to believe that if you know everything listed in his 66 questions you would probably have all of the bases covered. This would also mean that you would probably need to be prepared to share your answers with the 66 questions to your customer. It might also prove you well to know your competitor's answers to these 66 questions.
Competition of course shows up more than just in the business world. Your relationships with God and family also face tough competition. If you are not willing to know the answers to the questions that are important to God, your spouse and children then you will soon find yourself losing out to the competition.
In life you compete with tougher foes than at work. You compete with Satan who wants to steal away your time with God. You compete against materialism and envy that wants to destroy your marriage. You compete against the media and pop culture that want to consume your children. Prepare yourself to take on the competition and win.
To take on the competition means you will have to be willing to get to know God, take time to talk with your wife, ask your children how they feel about something. The best way to beat the competition is to know the people important to you better than the competition and while you are at it take time to know the competition. Come up with your own 66 questions and commit to understand all there is to understand about the people important to you. Start with learning more about what God wants for your life.
Copyright 2001, Jim Shoff. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
| About Jim Shoff: Jim is married and the father of three teenage daughters. Through his work in sales in the technology sector for the last twenty years, Jim has developed a desire to provide personal development advice for Christian business leaders through his www.leadershipresource.net web site. E-mail Jim |
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