In Honor Of April 15th The Beatles Taxman

(skip to about 2:40 if you don't want to watch the cheezy cartoon).

Notes: Guy Kawasaki’s How to Drive your Competition Crazy

Notes from Guy Kawasaki's Keynote How To Drive Your Competition Crazy presented at the 2009 eCommerce Leadership Summit

The presentation consisted of the 10 bullet points below (11 if you include the bonus twitter topic). My notes include some ideas on how to apply the concepts to my business (in italics).

1. Find a mighty opposite
   
   • 800 pound gorilla / company that is the opposite of yours and use that to highlight / market the positives about your business.
   • Examples I could use
     
     • No restocking fees,
       
     • next business day shipping on in stock orders
     • same shipping on in stock and ordered by 10 AM pacific
     • no hassle returns / 90 day warranty
     • we refund return shipping cost on defective items / wrong items
2. Know thy self
   
   • Have a mission statement (2-3 words that describe your business
     
   • Examples: Wendy's Healthy Fast Food, Honda Great Engines
3. Truly know thy customer
   
   • Why do customers purchase from you?
   • Good value, quick shipping, good / great service
     
4. Know thy enemy
   
   • Buy from your competitors
   • What do they do different?
   • What sets them apart from you?
   • Where do their customers come from?
   • Note how they handle returns / customer service / shipping / anything else and take the best of what works, make it your own and better
     
5. Focus on the customer / create good shitake
   
   • Nobody buys from you to help you or hurt a competitor (they buy only for their own self interest)
   • Create good stuff / service
   • Great stuff usually jumps a curve (i.e. it is not 10% or 20% better but is 10 times better)
   • Example of 10x improvement: Blocks of ice brought in from cold climates -> Ice Factories -> Refrigerators
   • DICEE (deep, intelligent, complete, elegance, emotive) most great stuff fits in this category. I am sure there was more to it but I take lousy notes.
     
6. Turn your customers into Evangelists
   
   • Evangelist customers have other customers bests interests at heart unlike a salesman that has only hist best interests at heart.
     
7. Create your own day
   
   • He literally meant create your own day as some companies have done in the past but I did not write down the example company. Really not applicable to smaller companies I think but I guess it could be applied on a certain level by sponsoring a local event or running your own conference (like Infopia did with this conference).
8. Make good by doing good
   
   • My notes are a big blank here. I think he pretty much skimmed / skipped over this (to focus on twitter later).
     
9. Turn your competition into allies
   
   • Examples
     
     • Home Depot helped drive sales at competitors because propane refills went up for competitors
     • A knight and a dragon team up together to start a BBQ rather than fight to the death
     • JB Hunt (trucking) and Southern Pacific Railroad teamed up to offer port to door delivery.
       
10. Play with their minds
    
    • After you have done everything else go ahead and just play with their minds
    • Example: Denver pizza company offered 2 pizzas for the price of 1 of you tear the competitors ad out of the phone book and bring it in.
      
11. Use twitter
    
    • This was pretty much about using twitter to market to potential customers using Twitter and making use of Twitter Hawk to automate much of it along with a plug for Guy's current business venture Alltop
      
    • Tweet Deck (aggregates twitter feeds?) and Tynt (see what is being copied from your website) were other tools mentioned.