Once you outperform your competitors in terms of the way that you do things, the way that you make your presentations, the way that you interact with your clients, the way that you follow up and service them -- when you're already outperforming your other competitors in that area, then the only thing you can really do is focus on how can I outperform my previous performance? David: Hi, and welcome to the podcast. In today's episode, co host Bianca Istvan and I will be discussing the topic of outperforming your top competitor. Welcome back, Bianca. Bianca: Thanks so much, David. So happy to be here with you. And what are we talking about? And what does that mean to outperform your top competitor? David: Yeah, great question. For a lot of people, we kind of feel like we need to do it. We want to do it, but we're not quite sure how or what or even who they are. So, what it means to me is that we are doing a better job at the things that need to be done to be able to deliver a positive result for our clients. So outperforming a top competitor means that we're doing it better. We're doing it differently. And we're able to convey that to people in a way where they understand it. They understand that there's a difference between the way that we deliver things and the way that other people deliver things. Bianca: Wow, that's absolutely fantastic. And, you know, thanks for bringing so much awareness because yeah, it's a lot of confusion around this topic. And you mentioned something about who our competitor is. So how do you even determine who that is? David: For a lot of people, when you're out there in the market and you're talking to people about buying your products and services, they'll say, Oh, well, I deal with this person or I deal with that person. So that's a good way to find out who your top competitors are. Because if you keep hearing the same names over and over again, that's a pretty good indication that they're a top competitor. Also, very often when we're starting out in a market, we may be aware of sort of the big dog in the market, the person who is already recognized as a leader. So, you may just know when you're going in the person who does the most advertising or who seems to be the best known in the marketplace. That's also a good way to determine, okay, this might be one of my top competitors. Ultimately, we need to decide who we see as our top competitors. But that's really just the starting point. Because I think that people make a big mistake when they focus on outperforming other people as their top competitors versus getting to the point where they ultimately have to outperform themselves, right? So I think ultimately we want to get to a point where we are our own top competitor that we're trying to outperform. Because once you've outperformed your other competitors in terms of the way that you do things, the way that you make your presentations, the way that you interact with your clients, the way that you follow up and service them. When you're already outperforming your other competitors in that area, then the only thing you can really do is focus on how can I outperform my previous performance? Bianca: Wow, that's absolutely a great answer. And I heard there a lot of hows. So how do you really outperform your top competitor? David: Well, a lot of it has to do with determining what is it that we're saying to people. How are we saying it? How often are we saying it? So it really boils down to a lot of our interactions with our clients. How often we're communicating with them, the very specific things that we're saying. The way that we're performing. Are we able to deliver what they're looking for in a timely manner?