If you want to stay ahead of the game, you’ll need to find ways to beat the competition with an enduring competitive advantage. But can you get ahead of the market when you have limited capital? No matter what your business does, the following tips can help you not only get ahead of the pack but stay there in the long term.
Get organized.
The first thing that any business owner should always be doing in order to be successful is to get yourself organized. One of the best ways to be organized is to create a to-do list for each day and once each item has been completed, check it off your list. This will help you ensure you’re completing all essential tasks and that you never forget anything.
There’s also a variety of organizational software available on the market which you can organize workloads and employee hierarchy to increase the effectiveness of each day. With everything organized correctly, not only will you be able to stay focused on more important things like expanding your customer base, but it will also keep you ahead of the competition.
Play to your strengths.
When it comes to providing customers with positive reasons for buying your products or services, it’s super important to focus on any area that you’re significantly superior to your competitors. Especially if they have lower price points than you. So, what does your business do that makes it unique? What do you do that’s always better than the rest? Whatever the answers to those questions are, you should be telling everyone you can about it.
Grant Cardone, renowned sales expert, and speaker has this to say on the importance of playing to your strengths — “Tapping into your strengths and playing the game your way is the only way you can succeed.”
Use this to differentiate yourself from the competition in ways that both your current customer base and potential customers can value and understand. Ultimately, you need to find ways you can clearly show that what you’re offering is better than the rest.
Better customer service.
There are so many previously successful businesses out there who somehow forgot how important it is to always provide the best possible customer service. So if you make an effort to improve the service for your customers, you’ll find that they’ll be more inclined to come back to you rather than your competition the next time they need something.
Aaron Babb, director of Aevum Health has this to say on the importance of customer service when you operate in a competitive niche — “We always want to offer the best experience we can and to do so, it’s essential that we’re across all possible touchpoints our clients have with us. From the moment they contact us, the way we handle their questions and address their needs is critical.”
He then explains, “Another important touchpoint is the after-sales service. Simply calling your clients up and checking up on them will go a long way.”
Analyze your competition.
Nicholas Phair, the Founder, and CEO of telbee, says: “At the start of telbee’s journey, competitive research helped us identify gaps in the market and informed the development process. Even now, even after creating a solution that’s totally new, it’s still crucial to research others in our space to make sure we are on top of the strategies being used to keep up with the ever-changing tech market landscape and trends.”
That’s why one of the most effective ways for you to really stand out from your competition is to know where you both stand and use that to define your brand promise. Competition always breeds the very best results in business. In order to be successful, you should thoroughly analyze all aspects of how your competitors do business.
According to Alex Bill director of ClothingIRC, you are bound to study competitor products and services, check their social media content and campaign strategies, as well as their overall approach to marketing. Finding and then exploiting holes in their business model can be an excellent way to set your company apart from theirs. Just remember that you want to refrain from copying from others, as that might cause more harm to your brand’s reputation than good.
Hire the best staff.
Hire the right people and find new ways to ensure they are happy and content working for you. This is important because highly skilled and motivated staff consistently underpin successful and growing businesses. Attracting unicorn employees means you have to do much more than simply paying them a competitive wage such as creating a good working atmosphere with flexible hours where possible with room for career development.
Laszlo Bock, Co-founder, and CEO of Humu and Author of Work Rules have this to say on hiring top talent — “Hiring is the most important people function you have, and most of us aren’t as good at it as we think. Refocusing your resources on hiring better will have a higher return than almost any training program you can develop.”
You should always be protecting your existing pool of talent by taking care of them and understanding what motivates each. Your staff is always an extension of your company as a whole. As your business grows, having a team of reliable staff who genuinely care about your business will mean that your customers will be much more likely to receive the best quality of service. Ultimately, your staff will have a massive impact on how successful your business will compete in the market so that your business prospers.
Casey McGeever, CEO of Heroic Games, maker of Ship of Heroes an upcoming MMORPG currently in Beta said, “We have had great luck sourcing the best contractors from all over the world. We have used mainly the Epic Games UnrealEngine 4 forums to advertise and found devs with highly specific skills from Thailand to Romania.”
Summing Up
Finding ways to stand out from every other business may seem impossible, but it’s crucial to your success. And competition between businesses seems to be intensifying lately at a fairly rapid pace. Thankfully with a little planning and some careful research, you can always find new ways for you to differentiate yourself with unique selling points for your services or products. Simply by following the tips above and thinking outside the box, you’ll find new ways for your business to get out in front of your competition.
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