As a business owner, you need to Know Who the Competition is!  I can’t tell you how many people go into business without knowing their competitors.  Not knowing who your competition is would be like an NFL team preparing for the Super Bowl and not knowing who they were playing.  You are not learning who the competition is so you can worry and obsess about them.  You are learning who the competition is so you can learn from and strategize against them. 

One thing I always used to do is go to trade shows to seek out my competitors. Trade shows are a great way to stake out your competition.  Get information from their booths and even speak to their representatives.  Look at their advertisements; discover the different ways they market and communicate to the marketplace.  See if you can figure out how their logistics work, what KPI’s they use, what business forecasting model they use, or if they use contract manufacturers.  See if you can find out what their distribution strategy is.  If you market regionally (like a brick and mortar retailer) you should develop relationships with businesses that do what you do who are not in your market.  I cannot overemphasize the abundance of information you will get out of those relationships.  I have had life long relationships with people who are in the same business as I was but were in different markets. 

Take what you learned from these relationships and put together a plan on what things you will do the same and what things you will do differently.  You need to figure out what separates your business from the competition.  Two competitors may have the same product but they may be trying to solve different problems.  See if you can solve a different problem than your competitor who may have the same product. 

In order to have a successful business you need to have a solution to a problem that exists in the marketplace.  This is why it is so important to know your competition!