Your Market

Are you actually in the right business?

That is a question I often ask my clients.  As an example, prior to Starbucks, you could walk into almost convenience store and get 32 ounces of coffee for just 25 cents.

Enter the now widely known Starbucks who's "product" is coffee where a mere 16 ounces was 4 bucks.  That's because Starbucks wasn't in the coffee business, they were in the lifestyle business.

Take a look at the grocery store Whole Foods and you see the same thing.  The products that they sell are organic foods, and health supplements.  However Whole Foods is not now, nor have they ever been in the grocery store business.  Like Starbucks, Whole Foods is in the lifestyle business.

Now I am not at all saying that you have to be in the lifestyle business to be successful.  What I am saying is that if you want to struggle, if you want to be "price shopped" constantly and your prices driven down, then stay in whatever commodity business you are in.

Success comes from being in the business of giving your customers something they desire.  Success comes from being in a business that provides real solutions to real problems in some unique manner.

You want people to see you as the only person who can provide what they want, and/or can provide the solution to their problem.

Now doing this is actually surprisingly easy and it can be done with ANY kind of business no matter what you sell or who you sell it to.  However, it does require some slightly different work than you are currently doing.  You have to want to be a market leader ... a THOUGHT leader in your space.

Once that happens, you can charge premium prices.  You can have enviable profit margins.  You can take only the best customers while sending the crappy customers that do nothing but complain to just go away.

You can be the leader of your market ... but you have to be in the right business.  Are you?

This is just one of the great many things we can discuss when you get your free strategy session.  Simply click the "Free Strategy Session" link near the top of the page for details.