Thor Schrock

A few months back I wrote a post about why a recession is the perfect opportunity to use the assets you have to position yourself against your small business competition.  I also encouraged my readers to make a plan based on your businesses strengths and not the strengths of their competitors.

If you are successful in gaining market share during slow economic times, that market share is coming directly from your competitors.

There is no doubt that recessions can be stressful on businesses, and if you are soaking up market share form your competitors their ability to pay their bills on time will be effected.

That is why I use Dunn and Bradstreet to keep an eye on my direct competitors for me.

Whenever the competition is late with their bills or their Paydex (business credit) score drops, that is an indication that they are experiencing financial stress.

Today I received an alert on one of my local competitors that I am not going to name here.  The point of this post is that if you conduct your business operations from a position of strength, you can then use indicators like these to see which of your competitors are being displaced by your activities.