Underdo your competition

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.