From the marketing trenches...: If you can't beat 'em...change the rules.

Remember what it was like when you were playing a game as a kid and losing? Wouldn't it have been great if you could have called time out and then changed the rules?

No doubt, your older brother wouldn't let you get away with it in Monopoly. But you can get a way with it in business.

Let's say you're faced with a dominant competitor with considerably more resources than you. And you're losing the game. What can you do? First, here's something you shouldn't do: Don't try to level the playing field. Instead, create your own playing field. In short, change the rules. Here's a great example:

Target vs. Walmart
They don't make Goliaths any bigger than Walmart. The retail landscape is littered with those who tried to beat Walmart at their game. But Target was different. Target created a new playing field, we'll call it "Tar-zhay". On the Tar-zhay playing field, it isn't about the lowest price. It's about value-priced cool. And affordable chic. It's about good design for a good price.

So while Kmart, Montgomery Ward and others were trying to slay Goliath on Goliath's turf, Target was changing the playing field and, thus, changing the rules. We all watched what happened to both Kmart and Montgomery Ward. Target not only survived the confrontation with Goliath, they thrived.

Ok, so maybe you don't operate on a scale as large as Target. It can still be done. I know because we did it here at my company over the last two years...

Loyalty vs. Transportation
We took market share from the top 3 express companies (think Brown and their ilk). And we did it by changing the rules of the game.

We offer a service that handles returns for online and catalog retailers. Similar services are also offered by the other, much bigger, guys. We knew we had to change the rules. If we played by theirs, on their playing field (we'll call it "transportation"), we would get crushed.

So, we created a playing field that played to our strength. We'll call it "Loyalty". Our system was geared to do more than move return boxes to retailers. It also helped foster customer loyalty and increased the ability to retain customers...a huge metric in the retail world. We created an entirely new language for the world of retail returns to go along with our slightly, yet significantly different take. And it worked.

Now when our competitors walked into their prospect's office, they weren't asked for the lowest transportation price available. Instead they were asked questions such as: What can you do to boost my customer loyalty? How does your system help me retain my customers? Needless to say, our competitors could talk transportation and boxes all day long but weren't remotely prepared to talk about this stuff. These topics weren't covered in their rule book.

In a little over 2 years, we grabbed significant market share with over 80 retail brands using our service instead of the big three's.

Trust me, it's a lot easier to win when you change the rules in your favor.