Strength or Weakness?

Guy Kawasaki told an enlightening story about the old Woolworth’s Department Stores in How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit.

When Woolworth’s moved into a market, the entrenched department store across the street launched a campaign to remind the market that they were there first, that the customers should entrust only an established retailer, and implied that Woolworth’s was an unproven start-up not worth gambling on. The older, established store put up a sign in their window that simply read, DOING BUSINESS IN THIS SAME SPOT FOR OVER 50 YEARS.

Woolworth’s countered with a sign of its own. It read, ESTABLISHED A WEEK AGO. NO OLD STOCK.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said, “In weakness, find strength, and in strength find weakness.” What may, at first, look like a serious strength of a competitor may actually be the exact thing we can exploit to our advantage. The thing THEY think is a weakness may be EXACTLY why we’re the better choice for the customer.