Growth Road Map Part 3: Steps 8 – 10
- Innovate to Differentiate
Take any market and you will see a number of companies offering copy cat products beating each other up on price. Too many businesses are seduced into the price matching game. Whilst some businesses are experts at being the lowest cost provider into the market place and are supremely internally efficient to make profit. Many, engaging in price competition are not sufficiently efficient and cannot sustain the low prices.
Instead differentiate your product or service by quality or innovation or bespoke solutions for your customer.
When you have a strong position in your home market it often makes sense to take your existing product to new markets. Beware of directing resources away from innovation in your offering to your home market. Continued growth requires your point of differentiation to remain strong. If your high price is justified on innovation and quality and that pace of innovation slows then customers could vote with their feet as your offering no longer is deemed worth the price. Nokia made this mistake and Apple is showing signs of making it also.
- Engage Your Team
Daniel Pink’s research in his book ‘Drive’ shows that the money does not act as a motivator unless for people doing repetitive, monotonous tasks that require no thought, and then only for a short period of time.
What actually motivates people is Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy. i.e. Having a compelling purpose for your business and getting people to feel a part of making that happen, encouraging them and supporting them to master skills and then trust them to get on with the job. Give them autonomy.
- Collaborate
Collaboration continues to be a significant strategic trend with large and small businesses. An increasing amount of people are now freelancers.
As a result in this ‘You Economy’ you will see micro and small businesses collaborating with medium and large organisations on a project by project basis. Who can you partner with/Joint Venture with?
Who has as their customers the kind of businesses you would like as your customers? What can you bring to the party that would be a win to them, to their customers and finally to you? If they have a strong brand and distribution can you bring an innovative product?
Or if you have product and distribution who can your partner with to bring you brand? Who can you collaborate with to develop a much better product for the needs of the market?
I will be sharing the next final two steps in a 30 minute webinar next Thursday at 7pm. We will follow this with 15 minutes of Q&A which is your chance to submit a question to me before hand for me to answer about growth in your business.
Click here to register here for the next webinar.
