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Enemy Mine

Learning to live with the competitors you love to hate

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This story appears in the October 2003 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Thinking about the war with got Michael D. Alter, seniorvice president and founding member of SurePayroll inSkokie, , pondering the lessons of conflict:

Do we need enemies in business? My company, SurePayroll,competes with ADP and Paychex, the No. 1 and No. 2 payrollcompanies in the country. SurePayroll is No. 6, having gotten thereby driving in ADP and Paychex's blind spot: We caterexclusively to . ADP and Paychex probably don'tthink about SurePayroll too often, but I think about them all thetime. Having an enemy motivates me. Our screen saver shows David(SurePayroll) using a slingshot to knock out two Goliaths (ADP andPaychex).

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