Chapter 10
Competition Is for Sissies
One of the great lies perpetuated by mankind is the idea that competition is good. Good for whom—exactly? It might help provide customers with choices and compel others to do better. However, in the business world, you always want to be in a position to dominate—not compete. If the old saying is, “Competition is healthy,” the new saying is, “If competition is healthy, then domination is immunity!”
From what I have seen, competing with others limits a person's ability to think creatively because he or she is constantly watching what someone else is doing. The reason my first business has been so successful is because I created sales programs that introduced a truly original way of selling for which there was no competition. It was clearly a new way to think and approach selling. No one had done anything other than just copy one another for the past 200 years. So I ignored the competition and did something created a new sales process called “Information-Assisted Selling.” This was before the Internet and before consumers had information readily available to them. I predicted that sellers would have to throw away the old ways of selling and learn how to use information to assist them. Although I was ahead of my time and traditional thinkers resisted once the Internet hit critical mass, information-assisted selling became a way of selling, and my competition was left holding on to antiquated systems and processes. And I came out on top, because ...
