In my post yesterday on how you can survive the arrival of a tough competitor, the book “The Upside: The 7 Strategies for Turning Big Threats into Growth Breakthroughs” by Adrian Slywotzky offers some questions you need to ask to help you fend off this competitor:

1. Do you have an early warning system to help you find out if a competitor is coming in to your space? You can gather information from your own customers, suppliers, employees (if any), distribution people.

2. If the competitor is already operating in your space, have you taken the time to analyze your own operations with that of the competitor? What are the advantages of this competitor?

3. How can you now differentiate your business from that of the competitor? What assets do you have — whether tangible such as products or intangible such as customer loyalty — that this competitor would find hard to match?

4. The most difficult question is how can you change your business to outcompete this competitor?