I had an interesting conversation recently with a close competitor, he called me because of his increasing concerns that a well established but non direct competing organisation was now starting to offer Leaflet Distribution at an alarming rate! alarming in the sense that for independent professional firms such as ourselves it would be difficult to compete.
The organisation is huge, a national institution in fact but leaflet distribution is not their core business its bolted on additionally, now you may say there is nothing wrong in that and you’d be right however if you look closer to what’s on offer you realise the personal and customer service is just not there.
My feeling is they are trying to cater to the many businesses that are so price oriented that other values are not priority so for them its a no-brainer however the costs in time and money that can soon devalue the benefits.

This post is not to name names or point out the defieciencies of this service in detail but to rather focus on what can be done to combat this situation.
I quickly realised talking with my competitor this was the only way forward it and I said so.
It would have been easy to wallow with him so I immediately made it quite clear that if this is the way its going to be then we both must do our utmost to give so much value to win new business and implement every differential possible to not just this organisation but to all competitors, which is has been my mindset anyway, But as now there was a real threat to our long term existence it was more important than ever.

To conclude I truly believe if you do not set yourself apart even in a minor way business will always be won and lost on just price, that said you can’t win em all and there is no point trying because that’s what people who start price wars want they think they win everything on price and it doesn’t matter what value others can offer but the good news is that they can’t win em all either.