The Discipline of Competitiveness

By Dr. Peter Chee & Brian Tracy

This is the 6th chapter of ITD World's 12-part newsletter series: 12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence.

According to Dun and Bradstreet, the primary reason for the success/ failure of a business is determined by the marketing effort. Strategic marketing is the art and science of determining what your customers really want, need, can use, and afford - and then helping them to get it.

The starting point of successful marketing is to remember that customers are always right. They buy for their reason, not yours. Your ability to appeal to their real desires determines your success in business.

The Purpose of a Business

The purpose of a business is NOT to make a profit - but to create and keep a customer. Profits are the result of creating and keeping customers in a cost-effective way.

The cost of creating customers initially is high, yet the cost of keeping them is far lower. The most successful companies are the best at marketing. Below are the keys to strategic marketing:

• Quality. People will always come back to a quality supplier.
• Excellent customer service. Quality products combined with superb service, in comparison with your competitors, are the primary factors that determine market success.

The purpose of marketing is to differentiate your company - in the minds of customers - from your competitors. It is to create perceptions of unique added value in comparison with others.

4 Approaches to Successful Marketing

You can approach the market in four ways. The 1st one is by creating utility in satisfying the needs of your customers. You offer something they need and can use to accomplish their goals. Take a good look at FedEx - they created an industry that had never existed before, when founder Fred Smith saw a growing need for rapid letter and package delivery, preferably overnight, because of the slowness of regular mail.

The 2nd approach is pricing. You bring your products/ services into the price range of your customers. The greater your market share and the lower your cost of production, the lower will be the prices you can charge. Walmart has successfully applied this strategy and become the most reputed retailer in the world.

The 3rd strategy is adapting to the customer's reality, both social and economic. A perfect example is Sears when it became the world's largest retailer by initiating an unconditional money-back guarantee policy when it was in the catalog business. At that time, the customers' reality was that if they bought something from the catalog that didn't work, they were stuck with it. Sears' action led to a revolution in merchandising and retail sales - unconditional guarantees are now the norm of almost all businesses.

The 4th approach is to deliver what represents true value to the customer. IBM is the perfect example - they provided the security that once you bought their products, you were protected with service support if the equipment broke down.

Why People Buy

People buy products/ services to satisfy needs, to solve problems, or to achieve specific goals. Nobody will buy a product/ service unless they feel they will experience an improvement in their conditions. Focusing your advertising and promotion on how the customers are going to be better off is the key to successful marketing.

According to the Harvard research of Theodore Leavitt, people buy the feeling that they anticipate enjoying as a result of owning the product/ service. What feeling exactly will your customers experience when they buy your product/ service?

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis is essential to effective marketing. Who are your competitors? Why do people buy from your competition? How can you present your product/ service as superior to your competitors?

Getting people to switch from something they know to an unknown product/ service is difficult - unless your competitive advantages are obvious and attractive.

Achieving Competitive Advantage

Achieving competitive advantage is the key to increased sales and profitability. You have to be able to say to your customers, "We are the best in this area". Everyone in your team should know exactly where and why you are superior to other competitors.

Discovering, developing, and promoting your "uniqueness" is the vital factor in market leadership and superior profitability. It should be made clear in all of your promotional materials. Thinking about competitive advantage all day and night is a key focus for all successful businesses.

Now it's time for some Action Exercises

1. Determine your area of competitive advantage, what your product/ service offers that makes it superior to any other product/ service in the market.
2. List 3 ways that you could sell more in your existing markets.
3. Decide upon 3 ways that you could test the potential of your new product idea before investing time and money and creating/ marketing it.
4. Identify your main competitors, those companies or influences that determine how much you sell and at what price.
5. List the traditional products you could develop and bring to the market with your existing resources.
6. List 3 elements of the marketing mix that you could change in some ways to increase sales in the months ahead.
7. What could you do immediately to offset the perceptions customers have of your competitors' advantages? How could you make your products more attractive than those of your competitors?

Stay tuned to our upcoming newsletter to delve deeper into the 7th discipline: Creativity.

Wish to scale up your Leadership skills for Sustainable Growth? Get for yourself a paperback handbook now - written by Dr. Peter Chee & Brian Tracy.

More opportunities for Leadership Excellence

At ITD World, we believe that leadership is a competency that can be learned and mastered. We also believe that leadership is influence and through the behaviors and habits developed in our training programs, you may have a better chance of increasing your influence and leadership effectiveness.

This September, we are hosting a special once-in-a-year event - Global Leadership e-Summit (GLS). At this conference, leaders from all over the world are gathered together to network and share insightful experiences in leadership during crises.

In collaboration with ITD World, 5 MEGA GURUs will be there to host the event and help attendees scale up their leadership skills.

Learn more about the Global Leadership e-Summit (GLS) 2020 here: https://itdworld.com/global-leadership-esummit-2020/

For more tips on leadership and management during crises, explore our in-house leadership & HR solutions - provided by the TOP GURUs in the world.

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