Browsing: Strategy

A company, product/service that simply describes a category or proclaiming anything generic is not a brand. Brands are specific, tangible, meaningful, unique and useful. Here is a simple test for you to know if a product/service is a brand or not. Simply write this question down and try to answer it for the brand;

How To Breakthrough Business Growth Barriers In 2013. It’s that time of the year again when goal setting will be at the top of people’s to-do-list. But whatever your goal, you’re going to have to start taking action to make any real progress. Thinking alone won’t do it!

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY: How To Win The PRICE War. If you don’t want to be at the bottom of the market fighting over prices with your competitions, then be prepared to raise the bar above the usual or general playing level. In other words, if you want to charge more, be ready to give more and do more!

Business DNA: Why Your Company’s Success Desperately Depends On It! The DNA of a business determines what kind of a company it will be, the basis of its operations and its outcomes. It gives the broad picture of what the business will look like, what will guide its actions and what type of goals it will seek to achieve. They represent the soul of the business, what enables the company to function as a unique living entity.

Creativity is the essence of entrepreneurship. Meaning, an entrepreneur is nothing without creating. Products/services don’t fall from the sky like manna, they are created. And the one person that must bear the burden to create is no other than you the entrepreneur.

In business, just like farming, you don’t build to reap fast [quick], you build to reap large [big]. You want to reap what will sustain you over a long period of time while you are waiting for the next harvest to come. Because you know how long you must wait to reap, you make sure what you sow is of the best quality so that it doesn’t wither and die before the next harvest season. This is why every farmer only sows their best seeds.

No one business can appeal to everybody. So your best response is to define your brand and consistently communicate your own Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The emergence of competitions clearly separates the men from the boys. It is the businesses that don’t clearly stand for something that often get eaten up by competitions. If your business doesn’t stand for something, it will fall for anything. To remain competitive, you’ve got to be distinctive. There’s got to be something about your business that will make the customers have a second thought about going to the new competitions. What would they miss if they stopped coming to patronize you?

Take it or leave it, the entrance of new competitions will either make you or break you; these are the only two options available to you. Panicking will break you as it almost did to us but focusing will make you as we later found out. You see when competitions show up in your line of business it’s more like a raging storm that can sweep you off your feet if you are not standing firm. It is not the time for you to panic and start making frantic moves born out of fear rather than strategic planning.