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Five Golden Rules of Business Success
- By Wayne Messick
- Published 09/17/2008
- Small Business
- Unrated
Wayne Messick
Wayne Messick reports on how Main St. businesses are poised to succeed in the 21st Century on his blog www.WayneMessick.com His updated peer-to-peer collaboration report can be found at www.SelfDirecterPeerGroups.com
View all articles by Wayne Messick
It's simple but not easy, that to succeed in business, you must become a recognized expert, leading authority, or the best resource around in your industry for whatever you sell and whatever services you provide. You've got to focus on what you're best at and most widely known for. You can't specialize in everything.
Consider your marketplace then thin slice it to identify the sliver of your market you can dominate. Look at the smallest number of things you do that reap the most profitable results. You've heard of the 80/20 principle, get a copy of Thin Slicing and work out for yourself the best way to focus on the fewest things you can do that yield the most profit.
Then focus all your outbound communication, your marketing messages and your advertising to the key individuals within your marketplace who will either influence your success by becoming a better and better customer or as someone who provides prestige referrals deeper and deeper into your most profitable niche.
Golden Rule Number One: Be market driven rather than product focused. You know it's true that having a better mousetrap really does not mean that people will beat a path to your door. From the point of view of your customers, they have already voted by giving you their business. To keep getting their business with enthusiasm, so they will tell others about their choice of vendors, you have to be a high quality resource - a good value for the money.
Golden Rule Number Two: Price your products against their perceived value from your customers and prospects point of view. If it was just about price nobody would buy a BMW. It's about the perceived value of the product compared to the investment required to own it. It's not really about what something costs, instead it's what it's worth in terms of the marketplace. Spend time on this, measure your percentage of repeat business against one time buyers. This is a simple way to tell what your customers really think about your value proposition.
Golden Rule Number Three: Refine the best parts of your products. Adapt them to meet the demands of your customers. Don't be one of those people who is constantly trying to reinvent the wheel.
Focus on the positive elements and get incrementally better and better. Doing this based on the continual input from your marketplace also sends a strong message - you listen to your customers. Take what's already out there, learn more and more about other products and industries from the members of your peer group - taking these products, adapt them to your offering and implement your marketing strategy flawlessly and relentlessly.
Golden Rule Number Four: Don't wait until all the planets are aligned, all the stop lights along your intended route turn green, or your products and market analysis are perfect. You'll never go anywhere. Instead use a measured version of ready, fire, aim over and over again - each time tightening the focus, the intersection where your product, the market, your price, and your competitor's product meet more and more. There never will be a perfect answer, because as you are tightening the screws the target is moving. "Set it and forget it" only works in TV infomercials. Continually refining your focus and measuring your marketplace's reaction will lead to innovations and unique results impossible to achieve in the lab on a spreadsheet.
Golden Rule Number Five: Get and keep your people involved in the process - at every level, formally and informally. Everything that takes place in your organization involves and impacts them. When everyone understands that their inputs are important, that their ideas are valued, and that it is in their interest to be focused on the products, procedures, and profitability of the organization - they will respond. Nothing is more important to your success than a spirit of cooperation, when everybody is in the boat and rowing together in the same direction all the time.
Your success will be the result of your willingness to focus on the most profitable things your organization does, continually projecting a focused message to your market place, and a price that demonstrates value to your customers and prospects. Stay alert for changes inside and outside the company, find ways to adapt to take competitive advantage of tiny fluctuations in your market.
And finally, get input from everybody, creating internal and external peer groups that will expand the thinking and experiences possible - since you will no longer be limited only to what you and a few people in your company already know.
Consider your marketplace then thin slice it to identify the sliver of your market you can dominate. Look at the smallest number of things you do that reap the most profitable results. You've heard of the 80/20 principle, get a copy of Thin Slicing and work out for yourself the best way to focus on the fewest things you can do that yield the most profit.
Then focus all your outbound communication, your marketing messages and your advertising to the key individuals within your marketplace who will either influence your success by becoming a better and better customer or as someone who provides prestige referrals deeper and deeper into your most profitable niche.
Golden Rule Number One: Be market driven rather than product focused. You know it's true that having a better mousetrap really does not mean that people will beat a path to your door. From the point of view of your customers, they have already voted by giving you their business. To keep getting their business with enthusiasm, so they will tell others about their choice of vendors, you have to be a high quality resource - a good value for the money.
Golden Rule Number Two: Price your products against their perceived value from your customers and prospects point of view. If it was just about price nobody would buy a BMW. It's about the perceived value of the product compared to the investment required to own it. It's not really about what something costs, instead it's what it's worth in terms of the marketplace. Spend time on this, measure your percentage of repeat business against one time buyers. This is a simple way to tell what your customers really think about your value proposition.
Golden Rule Number Three: Refine the best parts of your products. Adapt them to meet the demands of your customers. Don't be one of those people who is constantly trying to reinvent the wheel.
Golden Rule Number Four: Don't wait until all the planets are aligned, all the stop lights along your intended route turn green, or your products and market analysis are perfect. You'll never go anywhere. Instead use a measured version of ready, fire, aim over and over again - each time tightening the focus, the intersection where your product, the market, your price, and your competitor's product meet more and more. There never will be a perfect answer, because as you are tightening the screws the target is moving. "Set it and forget it" only works in TV infomercials. Continually refining your focus and measuring your marketplace's reaction will lead to innovations and unique results impossible to achieve in the lab on a spreadsheet.
Golden Rule Number Five: Get and keep your people involved in the process - at every level, formally and informally. Everything that takes place in your organization involves and impacts them. When everyone understands that their inputs are important, that their ideas are valued, and that it is in their interest to be focused on the products, procedures, and profitability of the organization - they will respond. Nothing is more important to your success than a spirit of cooperation, when everybody is in the boat and rowing together in the same direction all the time.
Your success will be the result of your willingness to focus on the most profitable things your organization does, continually projecting a focused message to your market place, and a price that demonstrates value to your customers and prospects. Stay alert for changes inside and outside the company, find ways to adapt to take competitive advantage of tiny fluctuations in your market.
And finally, get input from everybody, creating internal and external peer groups that will expand the thinking and experiences possible - since you will no longer be limited only to what you and a few people in your company already know.