Is Your Business Competing?

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Where to Start if Your Business is Not Competing Well

Sometimes, the hard truth is that your business might not be competing as well as you want it to and it’s tough to (a) know why that might be and (b) to overcome the emotional barriers to actually do something about that.

Think about a successful small or medium-sized business that you know personally in some way.
I bet you that they’ve got one or other of these approaches to business:

  1. They’re focused, in a way that makes them different. Almost always in one of these ways:
    • they usually only service a fairly specific group of customers or clients (a place, a population segment or a business segment); or
    • they do something pretty unique and which is valued; or
    • they have built an amazingly credible and powerful brand; or
  2. They are the Ryanair of their world. Determinedly no-frills and budget-pricing; or
  3. The costs of running their business are much lower than other people’s in the same industry. They’re probably big enough to have developed economies of scale. They take those reduced costs and they either:
    • re-invest those costs in more advertising; or
    • re-invest those costs in making the product/service more valuable, probably through design or innovation.

If your business isn’t competing as well as you want, does it have one of these approaches? Be honest. The emotional price of dealing with an uncompetitive approach is high, but the cost of dealing with a failing business is higher.