If you are a football fan, you have probably heard about the ridiculous hours that football coaches spend scouting their opponents. You have heard tales of coaches staying at the office all night, only catching a few hours of sleep on their office couch, just to get a better idea of what their next opponent will try to do during the game. Each team – not only in football but also in all professional sports – spends millions of dollars on their scouting department.

As a business owner, you probably don’t have to spend the night at the office to understand your competitors. But you do want to have a good idea of what they are doing, and how you can counteract their efforts. After all, business is really just a game, right?

Here are some good places to go to do some amateur research on your business competitors:

The good old web

Start with the popular search engines, like Google or Yahoo or AltaVista. You have to be careful, of course, to pay special attention to the sources that you use from theses search engines. You can’t always trust everything you read on the internet.

Another good idea is to go straight to the website of your opponent. Often, you can get a good idea of what they are doing, or trying to do, just from the information they release from the public. Again, take this information with a grain of salt, because they are probably being careful not to give away too much information.

A great source of information on the web is marketresearch.com, which does just what you are trying to do: scouts thousands of businesses.

Talk to many, many, many people

The more you talk to people – peers, employees, customers, suppliers, etc. – the more information you can get. Sometimes, there is no better place to get good dirt on your opponent than from these sources. This is especially true if you use the same supplier as your competitor, or have some mutual customers. They will know exactly how your firm is different from the others. For example, you might get an idea how they develop their marketing brochures to advertise their business. Brochure printing is still being done by most companies even if they have an online website already.

Go to the experts

It may take some time, but developing a relationship with some key members of your industry can be a godsend for your business. You have to be careful not to ask for too much too soon, because you will turn most of these guys off by doing that. It helps if you can reciprocate the favor, and give them some information as well.

Experts that are very valuable to be friends with include: journalists (who is better at digging up dirt than a journalist?), club or association members (think Chamber of Commerce), and Securities Analysts.

Don’t ever slouch on your scouting efforts. You might miss out on something one of your competitors is doing, and that could spell doom to your company. However, make sure to act appropriately, and quickly, to any information that you learn. Ignoring an action by an opponent is just as damaging as not scouting him at all.