“You cannot be serious!” Imagine if John McEnroe had a meltdown about something he couldn’t believe was so… good!

Every once in a while there’s a new product or service so damn good it’s hard to believeit’s available without an inordinate cost. For example, I’m amazed by the value of email marketing on Constant Contact, Mailchimp and other email services. Just think of the service Google provides free – with very little if any advertising annoyance to you, the consumer.

Let me challenge you (I’m challenging myself starting right now!) to earn your next customer or client by being too good a value to pass up.

This is as transparent as it gets right here:

I screen every ad in this newsletter. I was just given a huge lesson when I clicked on my new ad this morning. It gave me the idea for this article: Be so good that even skeptical prospects will say yes!

My advertising service is just that – too good a service for me to pass up. LaunchBit put me in the online media business just by finding this newsletter (based on its excellent content) and offering to make the Chuck Sink Link actually pay something. All I had to do was give them some basic information and now this little newsletter generates a bit of income aside from the educational service it provides you.

So, just wait till you click on our feature ad today. I’m not saying this to be self serving. I’m blown away by how simple, easy and valuable this online tool is sign up for. If they follow through with their promise, this company will skyrocket. By virtue of their UX (User Experience) alone, this company will do extremely well. It is one of the best websites I’ve visited in a long time!

Quick update: after signing up so easily, a highly professional individual has emailed me twice and was very forthcoming with pricing and product info. We’re connected now as fellow marketing professionals.

Make sure you click the ad below before you exit. If you’re a businessperson, you’ll want to consider arming yourself with this tool because, literally, your competition will be all over you if they do. And yes, Mr. McEnroe, I AM SERIOUS!

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In business, it pays to make friends with your competition. Now I don’t subscribe to the saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” That’s corruption.

What’s really nice about ethical business practice is that competition is not necessarily adversarial. Your business competitors aren’t enemies; they’re colleagues and possibly clients, suppliers or both. Keep in mind the word, ethical. You may have some unethical or corrupt competitors and if so, ignore and avoid them. What about the ethical rest?  It might be a good idea to know their birthdays and learn their kids’ names. One of them might help you meet a deadline someday when your staff is short or your equipment isn’t working.

There is a tremendous reluctance on the part of some executives to go public with case studies or breakthrough achievements with their clients, lest the competition see it and react to take advantage of the information. Naturally, you don’t go broadcasting the details of your trade secrets or proprietary methodologies. What you do is focus on the good news of positive results, higher efficiency and growth as a result of the achievement. Some competitors may see it and be envious but most will probably say “good for them” and be inspired to come up with their own breakthrough, which could help you and the entire industry in the future.

When I was in the printing business, the competition was cutthroat on pricing. We constantly tried to kill each other off to land the project that would pay the interest on the printing press loan for that day. However, when our press broke down, we could always find a “cutthroat” competitor willing to print the job at cost for us, and we would do the same for them.

In the marketing services business there is a ton of competition everywhere, even in very small markets. Most of us practitioners handle websites, social media, online, collateral, print and broadcast advertising as well as consulting. Most of us have learned to play well together, thank God!

Long Knives Sheathed

This may be unique to my market, but we marketers network together and might beseen having 3-way conversations with mutually desired clients. We hire each other for specialized services all the time. We might even subcontract large portions of work to a direct competitor, depending on in-house bandwidth, because we trust them to do a good job. We know they’ll respect our client-agency relationship.

Several of my “competitors” – firms who offer the same services as I, are my clients because they need a good writer or an accomplished brand strategist. Several of them are also vendors (I prefer the terms supplier and strategic partner). I contract their services on behalf of my clients because they can do something better than I, and we all want the best client results.

Remain confident in your strengths and keep honing them. Become so well known for excellence in your field that the completion will only make you stronger and more sought by the market.