Really, I’m not interested in what you had for breakfast, nor what the weather is. If you want to be followed by people who are not decision makers then ‘your breakfast’ or ‘which train you are currently on’ is a great thing to Tweet about. But that’s not what you want is it?
So…
1. Automatically Tweet your blog posts once a week – that’s a great way to start. If you use a WordPress hosted blog (like this one) it’s just a case of ticking a box and you are done.
Or
2. Every day just go through your suppliers. As a designer you have lots of them. Tweet a compliment about a DESIGN RELATED supplier &/or one of their products/services.
Or
3. Maybe tweet a promotion
Remember
4. Tweets are eventually deleted from the net. So you don’t have to worry about keywords too much. If you are writing a blog post then that post will be permanent and the keywords in it are important. So with your Tweets just keep it simple, interesting and professional. Think “interesting narrative”.
But would you…
5. Tweet about your competitors? Sure if you want to help publicize their work (??) and sure if they reciprocate and Tweet back.
With the benefit of proverbial hindsight the changes that have hit the Interior Design sector in 2009 were ‘obvious’. I’ll take a quick look at how some of the aspects of sales & marketing in interior design will affect ‘you’ in 2010. As always I’ll be practical and sensible and not carried away by the hype of technologies or media evangelists.
So prediction number one. I started my introduction by saying how it will affect ‘you’ with the you in parentheses. That means all of ‘you’, plural, not just you my dear reader. Well, very, very many of ‘you’ will do little different this year to what you did last year or the year before. So not much change there. But just because you refuse to change does not mean that change will not be forced upon you by the market. For example, many large design practices are now much smaller, the people who left are now starting innovative new businesses and stealing your customers. Action Point: Innovate and survive. Make a point to change something in your business this year, something important not trivial.
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Prediction number 2. 2009 was an historically pivotal year. The time we are now living in will be looked back on by scholars as the period when the East truly began it’s economic ascendancy over the West. Not a nice prediction I know and I am not happy about it. Unfortunately, in 2010, the western economies will experience further serious difficulties. The American economy will trundle along and the UK economy will either stay in recession or double dip back into recession as massive, impending public spending cutbacks put government employees out of work. (The UK government has over the last year borrowed more money than all UK governments EVER ADDED TOGETHER that is a LOT of money and yes I have written it correctly and yes it really is true. The country and 6th ish biggest economy risks bankruptcy). This will impact you designers indirectly and directly. I doubt many of your clients work in government; however their businesses rely, in part, on the direct and indirect custom and spending power of government employees and government agencies. Action Point: Look at the type of customers you have and assess the risks to your future levels of business from that area. Survey the economic landscape in your target markets.
Prediction number 3. Many of you will start writing blogs because either it’s a good idea or because you competitors do it. About half of you will stop doing that because it takes up too much time. Action Point: Either write a weekly business blog or, if you have not got enough time to grow your business (hmm?), use Twitter/Facebook to micro-blog.
Prediction number 4. Some of you will take a strategic view on where new customers will come from and prosper accordingly. Look where the money is. Bankers STILL get huge bonuses and many spend it on houses. There is less funding available for large capital intensive projects like hotels but, once started, hotels are usually finished. Multi-billionaires are still billionaires; they will still buy ski chalets, yachts and villas because they are still rich. Footballers and MDs of PLCs still get paid too much. Fewer people will buy second homes and overseas homes. The property market (sales not letting) might grow from last year but it will still be at low levels. B&Q recently reported good sales in 2009…indicative that people are spending money on where they live now and not that they plan to move. HOWEVER remember that all economic bubbles EVER in history ALWAYS burst. (South Sea Bubble, Dot come bubble, house price bubble, footballers’ salaries!, etc.) also remember that just because an industry is in recession it does not necessarily mean it EVER will pick up at some point in the future. Action Point: Review and understand your customer segments.
Prediction number 5. No new marketing wonder solution. 2009 saw Facebook dramatically take over from MySpace. Facebook will continue to prosper. You should use it as a marketing channel if your clients ‘hang out there’. A mini-risk with Facebook is that adoption by the young and trendy is slowing as it is no longer as cool as it used to be, mainly because their parents’ updates keep appearing on their wall. Even I remember that sort of thing is not cool (just like using the word cool probably). Action Point: Use Facebook for your customer networking remembering that you are trying to network with potential business partners or customers NOT the competition, it’s not the size of your network that counts.
Prediction number 6. Traditional advertising’s terminal disease will not improve. Online advertising will continue to be adopted by designers. Traditional print circulations are falling, technologies exist to let us skip TV ads, etc. How many times do you get called with the latest greatest deal for a full page ad in some magazine you’ve never heard of? How many times does a new online web site try to sell you advertising space?. Why, for the first time in 23 (TWENTY THREE) years has Pepsi stopped spending on advertising on the Superbowl and switched to an alternative online media campaign? Advertising is intrusive, usually annoying, often irrelevant and we can now avoid it as well as ignore it. If I owned a small design business I would not entrust my money with an employee marketing manager to spend blindly on advertising. If I controlled my own media spend I would review closely every penny I spent on traditional print advertising and I would want proof that it worked. And that proof would not be forthcoming. Unlike Google AdWords, for example, which tells me exactly what happened and only charges me for success. Unlike this blog post that I know will get at least 500 hits. Action Point: If you do not advertise do so online with a limited budget. If you do advertise in print consider switching a significant chunk of your spend to online.
Prediction number 7. Although Twitter is rubbish. People will use it more and more in 2010 because, for the time being, it fills a need. The need is broadly defined by the ease of connecting with people, simple quick messaging, and convenience of use with technologies like mobile/cell phones. Action Point: You should really use Twitter for your business.
Prediction number 8. Search engines have changed and continue to so do. They now look more at the instant chats and posts that your customers are making. Maybe they evangelise about your business or are less than kind about it. Either way that sort of up-to-date pertinent information will find it’s way up Google’s ranking and you really, really (yes REALLY) should know what is being said about your business. Action Point: Review weekly what is being said online about your business.
As an interior designer you appreciate the beauty of the things you design. So how can this flimsily-named Twitter-thing have any beauty? or any use for that matter with the constraint of 140 characters. How can it be a professional marketing tool?
Well it is and I’ll tell you why. I should also let you know that I am from the original anti-Twitter brigade but have been converted as I wrote late last year.
Facebook is a great place to start or participate in online communities based around your interior design service. Use Facebook as one of the ways to increase your business.
BUT “What are the pitfalls?”. “What mistakes do interior designers make?”
1. Facebook Groups: These are a way to communicate with people with like-minded interests, join the same groups that your customers might or start your own group. The problems here are that you end up talking to your competitors or trawling through voluminous amounts of irrelevant comments and receiving lots of spam. The mistake is to join too many groups that are not really relevant to your business intentions.
2. Vanity URL. One common mistake here is NOT obtaining a vanity URL for your business on Facebook. What is a vanity URL? Well ours is www.facebook.com/kothea , you want one like that.
3. You are foresighted enough to write a blog to support your business. However you copy and past your blog to your Facebook page (when you remember). Use Facebook apps to automate this process eg Social RSS
4. You do not clearly display your contact details. You do not have a ‘call to action’ throughout the page. Think what a visitor would want from you next…and provide it.
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5. You only put text on your blog. Spruce it up with photos and videos if you can.
6. You only use Facebook. Use it in conjunction with other tools like Twitter.
7. Thinking it is the same as linkedin. It’s not. Facebook is a place where you will more likely be able to reach your customer base more easily.
English: An example of an automated online assistant. Further information is found in the Automated online assistant article in Wikipedia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you target the general public as an interior designer then you MUST have a facebook page for your business.
In previous posts I’ve wittered on about Twitter and given a few pointers on improving web sites. However I cannot stress the importance of Facebook to interior designers. It’s quite an important marketing channel now and it will become increasing important over time as it becomes more prevalent throughout the lives of your customers.
Let’s start off by trying to work out if you need to do something for your interior design business on facebook. Are your clients mostly businesses like restaurants or commercial offices? Are your residential clients technology averse? If the answer to these is YES then the ‘market segments’ (types of customers) you are targeting will probably be out of reach by Facebook. However that still leaves an awful lot of people who can potentially view communications about your company on facebook.
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You say, “Facebook is just glorified email, right? I can’t see how Facebook is a professional communications channel for my business.”
Well, people do use facebook for what could otherwise be achieved by email, that’s certainly true. But it’s a whole lot more than that. Facebook can be a proxy for a web site, it can be a customer service platform, it can be a portfolio showcase, it can be a design blog, and so the list goes on. It’s more than email, in that email is really a one to one type communication and it’s largely controlled by the initiator which, in the case of an email marketing campaign, is you. Facebook is a web of interacting ‘communities’ engaging in mass digital conversations.
But the world is changing away from the email we’ve all mostly got used to. People want information when they want it. They don’t want it when you want to give it to them. And they want it now. And that means immediately not tomorrow.
So let’s go back to your beautifully crafted email communication offering your services. It looks great and you were convinced into doing it because it is so cheap to do compared to paper mailshots, right? You send it out but…oh what a shame, the client’s project has just started with a competitor! If only you were quicker. Or maybe they will be starting their project in 6 months time and might mislay your email in the meantime. Maybe, as is more likely the case, they will treat your email with disdain and bin it without even reading it. So an ’email-shot’ was cheap to do but it cost you your time and it maybe wasn’t effective.
So instead, already having your design service offering and a online portfolio might have initiated that first contact towards winning the business. And totally new potential clients might have found your company facebook page because you write a blog with interesting content about home interior design issues and they discovered it through searching on google.
All well and good, but isn’t that a web site?
Yes, sort of! but there’s more. A blog is the first element of interactivity over and above a regualr website. It allows potential customers to comment to you and each other about what they think about the issues you are raising in your interior design related posts. That buzz you create in digital communities creates your brand awareness.
But people might complain and everyone will see it? Well yes that’s true but you should have done it right in the first place. This gives you a second chance to rectify the problem and to show people that customer service is important to you. You get the chance to stop people complaining about you when you are not there to influence it.
Writing a blog from within Facebook is free. Hosting your digital portfolio on Facebook can be free to do. Creating a Facebook page for your business is free. Compare that cost with the cost of doing it on your web site.
Oh and there’s another thing. Have you noticed those flashy Blackberry mobile/cell phones and Nokia equivalents? I’m sure you have. They are becoming more and more common. People are using them for all sorts of communications and soon they will be using them to do their research (eg to find an interior designer) on google much more than they are now. So you’ve just invested let’s say £$10,000 on a cool new web site. Fantastic. However. First of all you probably cynically or intentionally forgot to put a blog on there (and even if you did you probably won’t keep up writing it for too long) and secondly I’ll bet if you borrow someone’s Blackberry and try to look at your new site 0n it then it will look awful. Great showcase for your business?…not.
So you’ve spent all this money on a web site. But have you tried typing “Interior Designer” into google and seeing where you rank. Probably not that highly. So how are people going to find you? Well you could spend more on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but that’s a whole new and expensive ballgame so let’s not go there right now. Let’s do the effective and free stuff first.
Well once you built your network on facebook you will find people discovering your site inadvertently though your connections. For example Facebook will automatically tell a friend-of-a-friend that the friend is a fan of you, yes you the interior designer. So when the friend-of-a-friend is contemplating looking for an interior designer they discover that you have done a great job for one of their friends. It really is informal networking and digital PR, the sort that you used to do face to face and the sort that you used to pay for to get coverage in magazines.
So look. I’m not saying you can build an interior design business based on Facebook networks. What I’m saying is that it is a potentially cheap, new and effective marketing channel. Use it alongside your traditional methods that have already been shown to work.
And that’s another thing. With digital marketing you can see the metrics. When you placed an ad in a magazine you had no idea how many people saw it. all you had at best was an over-inflated circulation figure. You can now count the clicks. You can count where the clickers came from and you can track where the clickers clicked to. Be warned I’m watching you! (Digitally of course!)
It’s a bit negative really isn’t it? I mean spying on your competitors implies they are better than you and you are devoting time just to play catch up. Or you could turn it around and say that by employing ALL the industry best practice from all your competitors you will be ahead of almost all of them! Depends how you see it.
This article considers a few easy ways to ethically get more information on your competitors and then show you how to easily integrate all that information into your web browser so it’s there to use on an ongoing basis whenever you have time in the future. Fantastic long term investment merely for investing your time.
We look at:
Google Alerts;
Competitor News Feeds;
Industry News Feeds; and then finish by
Putting it all together in one place using Netvibes.
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Skip to the end of the article if you want the URL for the example created.
Let’s create a real life example by pretending that we are a Hotel/Hospitality focussed interior design and architecture practice. Now, I’ve only been to LA once so with my very minimal internet research I’ll pretend further that my main local competitor is Ralph Gentile Architects (www.rgastudio.com) – I don’t know this company and they seem to be in the hotel interior design industry. Also we will look at WATG (www.watg.com) who are a leading design consultant for the global hospitality market. Continue reading “Spying On Competitors – Staying Ahead”
Now consumed Become a fan on facebook https://www.tomtolkien.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This article tells interior designers how to setup a business page for their interior design business on Facebook.If you sell to the general public then the consensus amongst marketing professionals is that your marketing strategy must include Facebook. Facebook will work to promote your services through your network and through the networks of your network members.
If you sell to businesses (eg if you are a hospitality interior designer specialising in restaurants) then I’m not convinced that Facebook is the best medium. However, and its a big however, many of your clients will be using Facebook already so maybe you should use it to help them consume the information that you produce and to help them interact with your organisation in a way that suits them. It’s not what is easiest for you that should be the way forwards, it should be what is the easiest for your (potential-) clients.
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Let’s get started then. Here’s what you need to do and it will cost you nothing other than time:
1. Create a personal Facebook account if you don’t already have one. If you have one, use the one you have.
2. Create a business page for your business – sometimes called a fan page. Listen up here!
Don’t create another personal page.
Don’t create a group – you don’t need to know what one is.
Create a business(or fan) page: https://www.Facebook.com/pages/create.php
OK let’s focus on sales. Without further ado here are 8 suggestions for ways to sell more. Hopefully, at least one will be something new to try. Change is good:
1. One for the owners and managers: interact on the sales force with your staff and your customers. Be visible and foster relationships.
2. The retail world moves forwards changing all the time. Don’t look back to the glory days. Innovate, take a view on the future.
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3. Browsers. For all those people who just can’t be engaged by your sales people get the sales people to give these ‘browsers’ a flyer. The flyer (terrible word) can be a discount voucher, an unadvertised promotion or a brief look at a new product, anything of value. Keep it succinct.
4. On weekends when you are particularly busy ensure that a senior staff member greets entering customers and tries to engage with leaving ones (who have not purchased) to ask them what they were looking for that they could not find.
5. Make sure your best sales people are selling on busy days. Ensure they are properly incentivized to SELL. Customer service is great but you want the money, right?
6. Consider a promotional event that is invitation only for your best customers (and anyone they want to bring along). Make sure there is genuinely something in it for the attendees.
7. Ask your salespeople what can be done on a practical day-to-day level to sell more. More products? Better layout? Different incentivisation or promotion?
8. Work your networks. Through Facebook; through staff, friends and family, email list.
This article looks at the very narrow area concerning how to make your Facebook URL for your interior design business appear professional. Specifically how to create a proper ‘vanity URL’ for your business fan page.If you have already done that then here are some more useful additions to the business side of your Facebook page.
Many Interior Designers who sell to the general public see Facebook as just one way of lead generation – to some it is more important than others.
Ok here goes. This is a real life example where KOTHEA’s MD set up her personal username on Facebook incorrectly, there was already a Fan Page for KOTHEA. This article takes you through the steps we had to take to get the ‘vanity’ url correct both for the individual and for the company. Our MD inadvertently set her personal username (vanity URL) as ‘KOTHEA‘. So if anyone typed www.facebook.com/kothea it took them to her personal page rather than to the ‘proper’ company page. This situation got progressively messy as she started to use Facebook more for personal matters with business messages appearing in the same place as her personal ones. The result was that many of her friends kept seeing fabric related articles when they were not interior designers. Hopefully you get the picture!
as the original name for the company as it was assigned by Facebook. Note for this all to work you must already have created a business page or FAN PAGE for your business.
What we want to do is threefold:
Release the facebook.com/kothea name so that it can be re-assigned to the business page
Change her vanity url/username name to something more like what it really is
Assign the proper company name to be KOTHEA.
Before we get started in earnest there are five critically important points: firstly, the person making these changes must be an administer of the business page and logged in to that page via THEIR PERSONAL ACCOUNT; secondly, you can only make changes to names once so be very, very careful; thirdly you must have at least 25 fans of your business page; fourthly, your business page must have been created as a Facebook PAGE not a group or anything else, it must be a page!; and finally Facebook sometimes requires that your personal account has been verified by mobile phone before any of these changes are allowed to be made.
If you are creating a page for the first time BE VERY CAREFUL some Facebook Fan Page setting CANNOT BE CHANGED (Jan 2010).
Here are the steps to go through:
Check to make sure what settings have already been made
Type in this exactly: www.facebook.com/username ie do not put in your username put in the word ‘username’. You will get a message like the one below.
This confirms that KOTHEA is my MD’s username.
2. From the facebook menu go to SETTINGS and then to “ACCOUNT SETTINGS”. You will see something like the following where we now want to change the Username NOT the name.
3. Click on the word “change” the one next to USERNAME. ie the one above the word KOTHEA in my example. You are then prompted for a new username. It must be unique and there are various limitations to what you can have (sorry I don’t know all the restrictions but Facebook seems to disallow certain names even though they might be unique – for example i think only one ‘full stop’ is allowed). Be very sure what new username you want. Continue reading “Facebook Fan Page & Vanity URL For Your Interior Design Business”
Project 365: January Mosaic (Photo credit: Greg McMullin)
I have worked on, sold, and managed many projects in the corporate and interiors worlds. It strikes me that the nature of ‘projects’ is very similar across all industries.
How you propose to engage with the client to tackle the project will win you the business. Price and competence are essential.
New clients might not trust you enough to feel they can commit to your services for the entire project, so bear that in mind.
Sometimes, risk elements in the project are high or unknown – you must deal with these in your proposal/pitch.
(Nugget 1: Highlighting risks where others haven’t could win you the project on the risk issues alone).
Anyway, the point of this article is to summarise different approaches to charging for projects. You’ve probably heard of most of them, but maybe not all:
1. The design fee
“I’m an interior designer, and I provide a fantastic service. I charge you for my skills, and you benefit from me being able to buy things for you at trade price; I don’t profit from the things I buy for you”.
This is a fair and honest pitch. Well done, I’d think about buying from you. It probably won’t differentiate you from anyone else, though.
2. The markup
“I’m an interior designer, and I provide a fantastic service; I’m going to do it for free for you, though. I have to make a profit, so I’ll make that on the difference between trade and retail prices for the things I buy for you.”
I don’t like this, but I know it is widely used in the industry. Firstly, your service is so good that you are giving it to me for free? Really? Things given away for free are generally valued very lowly in business. However, this approach might appeal to a cash-strapped buyer, so don’t dismiss it.
Secondly, can I trust you to charge the fair and correct margin? Probably not (I don’t know you; how can I trust you?). You probably won’t have any transparency into your purchases and their actual retail and trade prices. Besides, a savvy client can get many things at trade price anyway; buying is easy (ish) – selecting and creating is more the art, where the value lies.
This is the best way to make money. Read on, I know you don’t believe me!
Many of the world’s top consulting companies manage their fixed-price projects carefully and in great detail. They win the projects essentially because of their low price, which is conditional on many conditions. Once the client cannot meet those conditions, the price increases (a lot). After committing to a company, the client finds it difficult to withdraw later and switch suppliers. In any case, they share the blame for incorrectly specifying the project at the outset, so that is not a reason to think of ditching the new supplier.
(Nugget 2:) To make lots of money, you must understand what you must deliver in detail. You have to know all the risks, where things can go wrong, and how you will handle those eventualities. You have to be clear about what is and isn’t included. (Of course, add-ons for what was not included initially will cost a LOT later when the client changes their mind!)
This relies on you being organised and the client being less organised. In the corporate world, many buyers are now very organised, so this approach to projects is becoming less profitable. These projects often become acrimonious unless one side gives in over points of contention that arise, “I thought XXX was included” – you’ve been there.
Remember that when extracting every ounce of $/£ out of your client, at least be nice, polite, and friendly about it. Seriously.
Of course, if you’re new to the industry, you might go for this approach to win the business, and you MIGHT strike it lucky based on little or no detailed preparation. Or you might not.
4. Phased Approach
This works best where unknowns that the client appreciates exist; it’s a good and fair way of making money.
You identify the phases of the project: scope, functional design, technical design, aesthetic design, etc, whatever you choose to call them is unimportant. You come to a financial arrangement for each phase before it happens. When the first phase finishes, you accurately quote for the subsequent one. You might have indicated the cost of all phases earlier, but you should clarify upfront that you can revise prices as risks become more apparent. The great things about this approach are inertia, deliverables and risk.
‘Inertia’ is due to clients’ unwillingness to change suppliers unless they are annoyed. In this case, it’s probably a good time to move on, as you’ve messed up and lost their trust.
‘Risk’ because you MUST plan for all risks in this approach. Your prices include the risks, and you say you are charging a lot for phase H because of risks X, Y and Z.
‘Deliverables’ are used when you revise (typically up) the cost of a subsequent phase because the client has changed the deliverables (no matter how small the change).
Oh, and of course, it’s easier for the client to commit to small sums than the whole thing.
5. Mentoring
Here’s one you probably haven’t considered.
Sometimes, you know that a client is fishing for ideas for their project. You know they are going to do it themselves. (Nugget 3:) If you know that, why not tailor your proposition to that fact? “Look, Mr X, here are the 8 phases of an interior design project; you can probably do much of them yourself, but you are not experienced. I am. Let me work with you half-daily to help you in the various stages. If there’s one bit you are not happy with, like instructing builders or architects, I can do that bit for you.”
“I like this approach,” says client A. “I’m not a designer, but one day I might like to be; it can’t be that hard, and yes, I know I don’t yet have all the skills, so having someone to help me along would help.”
Of course, many clients will find their projects too time-consuming or their skills lacking. That’s fine, though, because they will already commit to you when they realise that, so you will be there to take over and finish it. At a price, of course!
The secret of this one is to snare the project that others have no chance of winning because of their approach.
6. Selective Phase Bidding
I wouldn’t say I like this one.
You essentially bid only on the phases you are an expert in. Essentially, if you do this, you will rarely win.
Many clients do not want to deal with multiple suppliers and prefer a single monthly invoice.
Yet you might not feel comfortable handling all aspects. The solution is a partnership with another supplier. Partnerships are fraught with danger but can sometimes work out well. (Nugget 4:) Make sure you work with someone you trust, and that they know that the partnership involves reciprocation, i.e., they have to get you involved in their next project.
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7. Capped Price
“I will charge you based on my time and the cost of the materials. However, you have a budget, so I promise I will not exceed it.” Crazy, don’t get involved in this type of project unless you are desperate. How do you benefit when taking on all the risk? This could cost you thousands. It could bankrupt you.
8. Floor Price
This sounds more like it! A minimum price! However, it would help to sweeten this with discounted rates above the floor price. Hence, the client understands that if the floor is exceeded, you will make much less than you usually do and will strive to avoid that situation, as you want only to do the profitable part of the job.
This one can work well; get your numbers worked out before you start.
9. Time Boxing
This is an excellent approach for the creative bits of a project, but less so for converting your designs into their built-and-installed reality, where potentially huge sums are involved.
You accept a fixed time limit and budget to deliver anything from a colour scheme to a concept apartment. You identify all phases of a project where such an approach is sensible. The great thing is that deadlines are met and budgets are adhered to for your client. Your client might not get quite as much as they wanted, or you might have had to throw more resources at the project than you would have liked, but in either case, the loss will probably not be that great in the grand scheme of things. This works well if you have a genuinely trusting relationship with the buyer.
Make sure you combine this with a LIMITED list of ‘must-haves’ for the time box you are working on. This must-have list places a risk on you, but in this scenario, I think that is fair.
It’s also quite an innovative way of managing projects, so it is a good differentiator when pitching for work. It gives you an aura of managerial competence just for knowing about such an approach (maybe!).
10. Risk Sharing
You identify the risks in a project, and if a risk materialises, you agree to share the risk burden beyond the costs already agreed. I wouldn’t say I like this approach. Avoid it by arguing for a separate piece of work to assess the risk in detail so it can be adequately bid for. The real problem with the approach is that you will get a financial hit for something you have little knowledge of or control over. It’s probably unfair on you, but it is acceptable if the risks are small as a goodwill gesture.
It’s a bit negative really isn’t it? I mean spying on your competitors implies they are better than you and you are devoting time just to play catch up. Or you could turn it around and say that by employing ALL the industry best practice from all your competitors you will be ahead of almost all of them! Depends how you see it.
