Conventional wisdom says that to beat your competitors, you need to one-up
them. If they have four features, you need five (or fifteen, or twenty-five). If
they're spending $20,000, you need to spend $30,000. If they have fifty
employees, you need a hundred.
This sort of one-upping, Cold War mentality is a dead end. When you get
suckered into an arms race, you wind up in a never-ending battle that costs you
massive amounts of money, time, and drive. And it forces you to constantly be
on the defensive, too. Defensive companies can't think ahead; they can only
think behind. They don't lead; they follow.
So what do you do instead? Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve
the simple problems and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to the
competition. Instead of one-upping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try
underdoing.
The bicycle world provides a great example. For years, major bicycle brands
focused on the latest in hightech equipment: mountain bikes with suspension and
ultrastrong disc brakes, or lightweight titanium road bikes with carbon-fiber
everything. And it was assumed that bikes should have multiple gears: three, ten,
or twenty-one.
But recently, fixed-gear bicycles have boomed in popularity, despite being as
low-tech as you can get. These bikes have just one gear. Some models don't have
brakes. The advantage: They're simpler, lighter, cheaper, and don't require as
much maintenance.
Another great example of a product that is succeeding by underdoing the
competition: the Flip--an ultrasimple, point-and-shoot, compact camcorder that's
taken a significant percentage of the market in a short time. Look at all the things
the Flip does not deliver:
No big screen (and the tiny screen doesn't swing out for self-portraits either)
No photo-taking ability
No tapes or discs (you have to offload the videos to a computer)
No menus
No settings
No video light
No viewfinder
No special effects
No headphone jack
No lens cap
No memory card
No optical zoom
The Flip wins fans because it only does a few simple things and it does them
well. It's easy and fun to use. It goes places a bigger camera would never go and
gets used by people who would never use a fancier camera.
Don't shy away from the fact that your product or service does less. Highlight
it. Be proud of it. Sell it as aggressively as competitors sell their extensive
feature lists.