Using Grace and Good Sense for Ethical Competition

While all businesses have the right to do business; this does frequently present a question with regards to ethical behavior when it comes to competition.

How much should you trust the "other" guy? How much should you tell the "big" guy? How far apart should you really set yourself?

Sure, you can always answer the questions of your competitors, but how much experience is enough, and how much is too much? There is a difference between working with integrity, and simply handing all of your secrets over to the competition.

These are things you will need to ask yourself every time another competing businessperson or human in a similar industry approaches you with questions with regards to your services, rates, and other business-related data . How much should your competition really know about you?

There are some points that you might politely and professionally decline to give away, but you must have enough integrity to not seek the same understanding from the competitor to whom you have previously denied your own information. These points incorporate:

Your rates - how you develop your rates is your business, and allowing the competition to know how to calculate rates will lose you an important advantage.

Where you get your sales - you have worked hard to develop your customer base. You neednt provide your competitors a free ride.

Try to maintain an understanding with your competition that neither you, nor they will badmouth each other, should a customer "switch sides." You might establish this policy by simply making an example.

Make certain that your competition does not ask your friends and associates who your customer are, so that they might hone in on your existing business.

While building sure that youre not being copied, you should also be original and join your own committees that you feel will be beneficial to you. You want to develop your own purposes and interests, not those of your competitor.

Make certain that other companies do not take your slogan and modify it slightly for their own use - and dont do this yourself. At most, utilize other slogans for inspiration.

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