5 Core Competencies of Ultra Profitable Modern Small Businesses

Master these five core competencies in business and watch the clients, customers, sales, and profits come pouring in.?

It's that simple.

In this article, we're going to dive into those competencies and share how you can execute them for maximum profit and benefit for you and your clients.

Core Competency 1: Content?

I’m not talking about content like Facebook posts or Instagram posts or LinkedIn articles or Podcasts or YouTube videos or any of the so-called normal contact strategies that you may have read about.

Content is what people see, hear and know about your business. The old adage holds true that people do business with those whom they know, like, and trust.?

The way you can elevate all three of those is in the content that you create that people will read that compels them to become customers.? That’s what I meant when I said content doesn’t mean you have to make a bunch of free posts on social media which frankly gets overwhelming anyway.?

If you’re like a lot of businesses, you may start out with a strategy to post content on social and you’ll post every day for a week or two.? But then you run out of things to say and lose the strategy.?

So let’s come up with a better way to do that shall we?

Content comes in what’s on your webpage any type of business.? It doesn’t matter if you’re a brick and mortar business like a local shoe repair shop or tailor or a gym, what people hear, see and know about your business happens online in the digital world not in the 3-D real world they’re where we live right now.?

What is it that somebody needs to know about what you do??

What is the outcome that your business provides??

What makes you any different from the other people that do something similar??

The core question to ask yourself when coming up with content is “will it help people know, and understand how my business solves the prospect’s problem better than anyone else, and why they should do business with me?”

Content is also in any advertising or marketing messages you broadcast to the marketplace. That actually leads me to core competency number two

Core Competency 2: Marketing

In broad strokes marketing is how you deliver your content to the marketplace.?

The most efficient means of doing this is through a paid advertising strategy, which I recognize most businesses don’t do.?

Recent reports indicate that 92% of small businesses don’t advertise and instead rely on “Word of mouth“ marketing … but my bet is is that if we really drill down into this “word of mouth” marketing strategy for these companies, we would find there is no real strategy at all.?

What we would find is that when a customer happens to mention it to another person that maybe those companies get business… Then again, maybe they don’t.?

Referral based strategies and “word of mouth“ marketing strategies are too slow and unpredictable to be used as the backbone for any business that is going to be stable and sustainable.?

To be able to effectively market means you have to understand how to capture people's attention, generate desire and how to get people to take an action you want.? In this case it’s visiting your store or buying your product or signing up for your service.?

No matter how you slice it you can have the greatest message in the world, but if nobody hears it and nobody knows about it then it’s not going to convert into a profitable sustainable offer that’s going to get you the thing that you got in the business for.??

Core Competency 3: Sales

The simplest definition of sales is converting people who are interested, i.e. prospects into customers. This is one of the most challenging things for business owners to do.

Most business owners were not salespeople to start out.?

Typically they were good operators of the technical work of a business or a profession, and then they decided to start their own company.?

For example, somebody who’s really good at being an accountant decided they didn’t want a boss anymore and started their own accounting firm.?

This is the mistake that most entrepreneurs make: They think that being good at completing the technical work of a business is the same skill set that will make them good at running the business that does the technical work.

In reality these are wildly different skill sets.?

One requires the execution of a specific task done well and done on time.?

The other requires critical thinking, navigating the complexities of customer acquisition, fulfillment, and management of a team of people.

Salesmanship is a core component of being good at being an entrepreneur.

Selling is not about building rapport and laughing and finding out where somebody was from in their hometown and finding common interests and trying to build a likability factor.?

Nobody cares about that.?

And nobody cares about your product either. Sorry, but that’s the hard truth you need to learn… It’s the same truth that I had to learn.

What people care about… And the only thing they care about… Is the outcome that your product provides.?

Yet way too often I see people sell how the outcome is delivered… All that does is create doubt in the prospect mind.?

They’re asking themselves “is it really that simple?“ Or they may be asking themselves “is it really possible to execute on something so complicated?“ Either way there are questions in the prospect’s mind in which the confused mind always says no.

Being good at sales requires understanding of how to control a frame.?

It requires how to understand the prospect and understand the prospect's desire.?

It demands that you understand your product and how your product specifically will help your prospect achieve their ideal outcome.

Core competency 4: Customer Support.

It’s easy? to make the argument that getting into any business today is easier than it has been 22 years ago. The barrier to entry in nearly every field is lower than it’s been. Technology has made that happen.

That means that consumers, businesses or individuals have a greater degree of choice than they’ve ever had before, which has made customer support more important than ever before.

The way that the customer is supported (i.e. how happy they are with the service or the product that they purchased from you) determines how many more times they will buy, and how many more people they will tell.?

When it comes to customer support, think about how you want your customers to feel when they purchase your product. What’s the level of experience that you can assimilate to the product or service you sell??

For example, if you provide a service, how does it compare with the greatest service companies on the planet??

At the Ritz Carlton, they’re not allowed to tell you “no.“ You can ask for anything and they’re not allowed to tell you no. Of course, there may be a delay in receiving it, and there may be a charge for you receiving it, but they simply cannot tell you no.?

If you go to a restaurant at a Ritz that does not have a baked potato on the menu and you order a baked potato they can’t tell you no because they have an oven and they have the means of getting a potato. Perhaps you’re going to need to wait a few hours and perhaps you’re going to need to pay $95 for a baked potato but you will get it.?

Is that the level of customer support that you want your clients to have?

Of course the price of your product or service weighs on this heavily. You can’t provide Ritz Carlton level service with Holiday Inn prices. So you have to make sure that the fulfillment is on point with the expectations.?

Speaking of which, expectations are a good thing to set when it comes to customer support.

What means “right away“ for you might have an entirely different definition for your customer. Right away for you may mean that you’ll get to it the next day. For your customer, they may think that you’re going to hang up the phone or get off of your computer and do it that instant.?

If you don’t communicate the expectation, your customers will always have a higher expectation than you have for what fulfillment means to them.

So think “what will make my customer so happy that they will continue to buy for me forever until everybody they know about what we do?”

Core Competency 5: Operations

This is the least sexy, but perhaps most important aspect that you can have in your business.?

You have to deliver on your promises, every single time!??

And you might think that means you have to hire the best people, but people are unreliable.? They get sick, have fights with their significant other , they have bad days.? You get the idea.??

The backbone of operations is the process your people will execute.? In simplest terms, a process is “the right way.”? It’s a consistent method of output that isn’t reliant on the specific human doing the work, but rather the steps the human is directed to take.??

What’s your process for how the phones are answered??

Do you start your emails with “Hi” and then the name of the person to whom you are writing or do you just start with their name???

When someone buys from you, what are the steps that must happen to make the customer feel great about the purchase they just made???

Processes are likely seen by your customers.? Systems are the back end they don’t see.?

Systems don’t usually involve humans.? They are typically based on technology that executes a critical task or supports the functions of the business.??

For example, point of sale software is a system that largely replaced cash registers in the 80’s and 90’s.? CRM’s are systems for monitoring, tracking and organizing prospects and customers.??

The beauty of systems is you can scale them more quickly than you can processes executed by people, which is one of the reasons AI is such a buzz right now.? More on AI another day.??

To sum it up, the five core competencies of modern small businesses – content, marketing, sales, customer support, and operations – are essential for running a successful business.?

Compartmentalizing each competency and mastering them one at a time can be challenging but the payoff will be worth it.?

Think of the success you’ll have when your product serves your customers in a way that no competitor can offer. That’s what you’re aiming for!?

Don’t forget that every day is an opportunity to get better at each of these competencies. Start with what you excel at and work on different aspects as time allows.?

It won’t happen overnight but with consistency, dedication, and determination all things are possible!?

Get good at all of these, one at a time!