Evolve, Evade or Capture
Jonathan Hartley
Account Director - UK B2B & Commercial.- Samsung Home Appliances (BTR, PRS, BTS, PBSA, National House Builders)
Three areas at some stage we will find ourselves having to make quick decisions?within our?business activities.
Similar to?the fight or flight reaction, the directional course is subjective to the individual and how they adapt?to their decisions and outcomes.
What we know is within the business world we work in there will always be:-
These are just a few to mention, but ultimately all are factors that we have to deal with in some way or form. They may arrive as individual scenarios, or they could all be apparent at once.
The single constant is that they need action, implementation and strategic planning to ensure that you are fluid at adapting with them, not static, just allowing the causes to eat way into your business.
Evolve?
This activity simply cannot be avoided in the business.
Whilst many brands and products have stood the test of time, they have done this through evolution of their products or services.?Evolving doesn’t mean changing everything, it simply means adapting what already works to suit the changing circumstances that you now are facing.
An example evolving can be seen in cooking appliances.?
To cook we need heat, that is a given, yet evolving this manufacturers have added cool touch doors, Wi-Fi connectivity for ease of control, soft close doors and LED lighting.?
The cooking is still done with heat, but the consumer or market driven by evolution and therefore can still cook, but paying customers have strong aspirations now around form and function because of what they see.??
If manufacturers just provided a box that heats up it would cook ok, but it would soon get left behind by the competition, with their evolving innovations.?
Evolving is only necessary when the situations requite it.
They say don’t try and fix something if it’s not broken, however sometimes just be prepared for it to break!
Evade
The other option available is to evade in business. This is not a weakness or a easy way out, if anything, this is one of the harder decisions to make in business, yet can provide the best results.
If a business was to mirror every change to every product or service that was in competition with them, evolving each of their own products to match, this would be simply not cost effective.
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Therefore this is where to evade is actually an opportunity.
Evade the products and trends that do not mirror your customers or core market channels. Maintain focus on what delivers your growth, build on this and explore the opportunity within.
Grow market share by focussing on the competition and evolving the products and services that are your current KSL’s (key selling lines)
The benefit of evading every trend in your market is that you can really focus on evolving what works and listening to your customers feedback, as to how these can be improved. This way you ate leading evolution from factual feedback, not following the crowd.
Capture
?Aim to capture, not be captured
For anyone business is what we make it. The opportunities are out there and just need to be sought out and?captured.
Whilst we are out evolving and evading, we are also being hunted down…by the competition. We could just evade our business and market share being captured, but that would be short term?as defending your estate protects what you have, but it doesn’t grow your business, it just maintains it.
As mentioned above in the evolve section,?customers can and will move on, so defence of your business, products and services is only part of the jigsaw to fill.
Therefore, to capture is to advance forward and grow your share.
Summary
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