8 Strategies to Stay Ahead of Your Competitors
If I might be excused for mixing metaphors: If you’re the kind of small business owner who typically jumps on the bandwagon, there’s a good chance that ship has already sailed! As I’ve traveled and met small business owners, I’d have to say that too many are sheep and just following the pack. For true success – the kind that allows you to build real value – you need to avoid the herd mentality. It’s not easy. It takes the uncommon combination of creativity and discipline. It’s especially hard for small business owners because they can become so easily entangled in day-to-day operations that they cease looking toward tomorrow. (I wrote a piece for MasterCard Biz that detailed three leadership strategies to help you get above the daily chaos. If that’s a problem for you, you need to head over there.) Once you have the ability to achieve charity of thought, consider these eight strategies to keep you ahead of the competition: 1. Ideate. Here’s a funny word you may not be familiar with but can probably guess what it means, which is: Formulate ideas. Leaders are always coming up with new ideas. Many never see the light of day. The goal is to develop the habit of coming up with ideas and capturing them in a notebook or an online tool like Evernote. The best entrepreneurs have a thousand more ideas than they’ll ever act on. 2. Imagine the future. Consider where trends are going. Develop different scenarios. What areas will be important for growth tomorrow? Think in all kinds of terms: markets, geography, pricing, demographics, and others. Here are a few examples: Will Millennials want what I’m selling as it is formulated today? Will the new international trade pacts give me new opportunities? Can my product or service be slightly altered to appeal to a new market? 3. Study today’s disruptors. Some areas of commerce are being shaken to their foundation today. Study those examples and ask yourself is such a monumental shift is possible in your market. If so, how can you lead it? 4. Understand your competitors. It’s critical that you thoroughly study both the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Their strengths are usually easy to see – you run headlong into them every time they beat you in the marketplace. You have some important management decisions to make here. Should you bolster your business in the areas where your competitors are strong or should your bigger effort be made to better exploit the weaknesses of your competitors? 5. Choose generalization or greater specialization. Should you broaden your market or more deeply mine the riches available in one market segment? This is a balancing act. If you select a more narrowly focused market and it shifts, you’re in big trouble. However, a precisely developed solution to a major problem can command high margins. 6. Consider acquisitions. Above I suggested that you imagine the future. Consider acquiring a related company in many of the same terms. Is there a company you could buy that would open up new geographic or demographic markets or allow you to change your pricing? 7. Give your business a facelift. This may seem superficial, but frankly much of our modern lifestyle is superficial! Update your logo. Redecorate your office. Revamp...
read moreHow New Printer Technology Can Benefit Small Business Owners
Editor’s Note: This post is sponsored by Staples. All the comments and opinions are my own. Few appreciate how Hewlett Packard has been at the center of the technology revolution in such a variety of ways. (And I’m not even going to detail how, with Carly Fiorina, HP named the first woman as CEO of a major tech firm.) Did you know, for example, that Steve Wozniak was working at HP when he essentially invented the personal computer? He offered it to HP, but they turned him down. At the time, the company’s testing equipment was the world gold standard and the heart of their business. Later, HP spun off its measurement products to Agilent, which became Silicon Valley’s biggest initial public offering at the time. It recently made a similar move with another split that put its printer products and enterprise business into separate entities. For the small business owner, the company’s lineup of printers remains some of the most important “go-to” hardware on the market. And the company just made major headlines when it announced a soon-to-be-released high-volume 3D printer that boasts speeds as much as 10X faster than its competitors. The new 3D printers – even with their $130,000 starting price tag – may work into the plans of some small business owners. 3D printing gives small businesses the ability to create prototypes, customized products, and smaller production runs that would previously been impossible or prohibitively costly. However, it’s still the company’s “bread and butter” ink jet and laser printers that are the biggest sellers in small business circles. In fact an HP DeskJet printer just took TrustedReviews’ top honors in the category of “best inkjets and lasers for the home and office.” HP’s Color LaserJet Pro also scored among the top finishers. It’s probably HP’s lineup of all-in-one printers that land at the top of shopping lists for small business owners – whether they have their own brick-and-mortar locations or have a home office that serves as, well, their company’s home office. I say this from the perspective of having witnessed and lived through the evolution of features and pricing among top quality business printers. It wasn’t that many years ago that an office had to have a separate (and expensive) printer, fax machine and scanner. Not only did they take up a lot of space, you had three machines that were prone to breakdowns and needed separate materials to keep them going. The technology and availability have gone a long way since then and this is much to benefit of the consumer, and especially the small business owner. Staples, for example, carries a full line of the HP printers and prices them so they are extremely affordable for even the startup small business. Recently, Staples added two new HP printer series to their inventory – the HP OfficeJet Pro Series and the HP PageWide Printers. Both of these printers are great assets to any small business. The HP OfficeJet Pro Series offers affordable, professional color for small businesses that want big performance in a compact design. Not to mention, the printer produces professional quality color documents for up to 50% lower cost per page than laser printers. These models start at $199.99 and are available at Staples online and in-store. The HP PageWide Printers offer record-breaking speed...
read moreHow to Exploit a Small Niche For Big Profits
A recent headline on the investment site Seeking Alpha read, “The Honeymoon is Over for Wix.” Wix is one of several web businesses that make it easy for anyone – and the word anyone is important here – to create a good-looking and functional website. It competes with other online services like Weebly and Squarespace. The headline was alluding to the fact that Wix needs to show that it can make some money. Since its service caters to anyone, the market is big, so you might be inclined to think that there’s room for a few big players. However, that big “anyone” market comes with some serious drawbacks: Big markets are attractive to big (and numerous) competitors. Competitors do what they always do: compete. Competition drives down prices (these website building services feature free levels). At the end of the day, trying to operate in such a big market ends up being a bloody battle of attrition with the eventual winner being awarded a market that has low margins. Further, there are always young upstarts ready to enter the market and battle for a share, so you’re always on defense. The riches are in the niches While these behemoths are mauling each other, there are other niche website building services that have escaped the bloodshed and been able to build profitable businesses, often by bootstrapped finances. Let me outline a few areas where I’ve witnessed some successes. Movie websites. I remember hearing the founder of one website building company describe how he changed the focus of his venture from general websites to websites that promote upcoming movies. That’s his entire business today. Being specialized allowed him to systemize what he does and this lowers costs. Further, once he established his value in this market, it was easy for him to acquire new clients. Auto sales websites. There are a few major players developing websites for auto sales. Here’s a market that is very big, yet homogenous enough to make marketing and servicing relatively easy. While companies like Wix and Weebly have to assemble a palette of website-building tools to solve everyone’s problems, companies that deal only with businesses that just sell cars only have to solve the typical auto dealership problems. Real estate broker websites. There are some very successful website building companies that only work in the real estate industry. The advantages are similar to the automobile sellers described above. It’s far easier – and profitable – to be a godsend to one kind of company than have to be all things to all people. As I outline these points, I’m reminded of an old friend who had a general IT consulting firm. She eventually grew so weary of competing against the same big firms for business that she decided to specialize. She focused her business on law firms. She understood their needs and was able to achieve significant success more quickly. I should also add that by narrowing down her market, she eliminated a lot of headaches. There’s a lot of value in that alone! Finding your niche As you’re planning your small business, or its expansion, think about focus. Think about finding a profitable niche where you can apply your expertise and be able to market your product or service more efficiently. Searching Google Trends and...
read moreAre You Missing this Critical Element of Small Business Leadership?
If we can boil down what is required to grow a small business we might get to this overarching truth: Everyone must be moving in the same direction. Anyone with a Facebook account has seen enough videos of people trying to herd cats that they know how pointless and frustrating that is. That truth applies to any organization. You will never make progress unless you have people moving in the same direction. When individuals start to stray off course, not only does it lessen the power of the core group through the loss of those contributing members, it also requires energy to go out and try to bring the wanderers back into the fold. Fortunately, there is a relatively simple – and please note that I didn’t say “easy” – way to keep your team moving in the same direction. It’s called leadership and specifically it’s small business leadership through example. Before we look at some of the practical implications and benefits of leadership by example in a small business, let me set the foundation by quoting an old adage: More is caught than taught. I’m a huge believer in proactive and thorough training programs, but training programs are a far better tool for teaching knowledge, skills and systems than they are at passing along the DNA of attitudes and priorities, which are the critical elements of small business success. Further, I think it’s undeniable that the growth and success of many businesses – even very large ones – can be traced back to a founder who leads by strong example. I might even point to Apple Computer. The company did very well at the beginning when founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were actively leading. When new – non-founder – leadership (John Sculley) took over, the company floundered. When Jobs was brought back, the company got back on course and now that Jobs is gone, it looks like Apple is floundering somewhat again. I don’t think I need to say more to stress the importance of founder leadership by example, so let’s look at some specifics. Customer service The customer service bar is set quite high today and you must instill a customer-centric attitude into your team, from bottom to top. To do this I want to point out a very important truth that applies to you as a small business owner: Your employees are your first line of customers. How you treat your employees should reflect how you want them to treat your customers. If you are an ogre of a boss, you can expect that attitude to filter down through the ranks. However, if you work hard to make your business the ideal environment for your team, that is the attitude that will permeate your small business and be sensed by your customers. It’s important to remember that ultimately people do business with people, not “companies.” You will create a team of people who others want to do business with if you relate to your team like people who deserve to be understood and respected. Dedication I was talking to a woman recently who once owned a small cleaning business. She hired relatives and had a very hard time getting them to be dependable and dedicated workers. Because they were family, they felt they could take...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: The importance of positive engagement and your small business culture
The importance of how you engage people is highlighted in this week’s collection of curated content from around the Internet; we should probably credit Dale Carnegie with these fundamental principles that extend even into the virtual world today. Leadership, management, and productivity In this interview I explain why you need to develop a mission statement that will inform your vision and shape behavior as you pilot your business through the next five years. Where are you with outsourcing? This article outlines the benefits and gives you hourly freelance rates from around the world. It’s not merely “customer service” today, successful companies are focused on the customer experience. And to help even more, here are five tips for driving valuable customer experiences via your company culture. Marketing and sales The timeless lessons of Dale Carnegie apply today, even in the way you engage people on your website. You know about the importance of video to your small business marketing, but are you applying what you know to every platform? A powerful blog positions you as an authority and brings in new customers. Here are 17 tips to help you create that powerful blog. Anthea Kelsick, strategy director at bluemarlin, explains why your marketing needs to promote the product, not the promise. You need to be diligent, but if you are, Snapchat 2.0 opens up new marketing opportunities. Politics, government and the economy Federal regulations are taking a toll on small business and if you want to get a feel for how bad the situation is, check out this article by Clyde Wayne Crews. Last week’s employment numbers were dismal. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised given Fed policy, which is holding down business formation, says Jeffrey Dorfman....
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