Using company credit checks to outsmart your competitors

Company Credit checks can be used in so many ways other than checking your customers if they are likely to pay you on time. They can be used to build a strong competitor analysis sand get valuable insight to your competitors that isn’t available anywhere else.

You’ll know the ins and outs of their business without the lengthy process of carrying out competitor research, saving you valuable time and effort.

What to look out for when credit checking your competitors

When you carry out a company credit check on your competitors, you’ll be looking a few key points:

• Credit Indicator – This will show if your competitor is facing financial difficulties. The higher the score the more stable they are. The lower the score the more likely they are to face financial difficulties.
• Payment Indicator – This shows you if your competitors are making payments on time or late. You can also see their payment performance
• Credit Events – Here you’ll see any recent events that have affected your competitors financial status. Something to look out for here is any CCJ’s have been filled against them.
• Directors, fillings and general business info - This gives you a snapshot of business information such as legal structure, no. of employees and even who the directors are currently and historically. This is all key when carrying out your competitor analysis.

With these 4 key pieces of information, you’ll gain good insight into your business, financial and credit status. To find out in more detail what’s included in a company credit check click here

How to use the results of the credit check to your advantage

When you perform a business credit check on your competitor, all the information above is accessible with a click of a button. No need to conduct lengthy research, using up your valuable time.

• Identifying strengths – If your competitor has a good credit and financial status, you know that they are employing strategies that work both for them internally and externally for their customers. You should research into this and gain invaluable insight as to how they are running marketing campaigns, what promotions and sales techniques they are using and how you could use these and even improve on them and keeping you one step ahead of the competition!
• Identifying weaknesses – If their financial and credit status is poor, you know that something is not working for them. Not only will you be able to conduct further research to make sure you avoid the same mistakes, but you’ll also be able to capture market share from your struggling competitors through scaling your own marketing and sales strategies, since you know they’ll be unable to compete as they don’t have the financial resources to do so.

It’s important to stay up to date

Its important to stay up to date with your competitors because they, like you, will be conducting research on what other businesses in your industry are doing. With CreditFocus you can add your competitors to your credit monitoring watchlist, this removes the need to constantly carry out company credit checks to stay up to date with your competitors.

Once your competitors are on your credit monitoring watchlist you’ll automatically be notified if anything changes to your competitor’s financial status as long as they are on your credit monitoring watch list.

When this happens, you should carry out research into what is affecting your competitors, both positive and negative. Resulting as discussed above – employing similar or improved strategies and staying one step ahead of the competition or taking advantage of their financial situation and capturing market share when they can’t compete with you.

Click below to find the other ways credit checks can be used to benefit your business or even start your free trial with credit focus today and get one step ahead of your competitors today!