Get Smart!: How to Think and Act Like the Most Successful and Highest-Paid People in Every Field
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- Your Business Model
| Your Area of Excellence What is it that you do especially well What is your area of excellence or superiority in comparison to your competitors relative to what your ideal customer wants, needs, and is willing to pay for? All companies, products, and services must have a competitive, comparative advantage over their competitors that makes them the best choice and ideally the only choice in their market. What is yours What could it be? Jack Welch said, If you don’t have competitive advantage, don’t compete He is famous for his rule that General Electric would be number one or number two in every market it was in, or it would abandon that market and concentrate its efforts somewhere else. For a company to be successful, it must dominate a market niche. In at least one area, it must be recognized by customers in the marketplace as being the best for that particular customer. In what areas do you or could you dominate your market What would you have to do more or less of What would you have to start or stop doing altogether? Peter Drucker, an adviser to Jack Welch, said, If you don’t have a clear competitive advantage, develop one.” Entrepreneurial thinking at its core is focused on developing and maintaining a meaningful competitive advantage in competitive markets. Your Business Model Today, the entrepreneurial focus is more and more on the business model, the complex strategy that your company uses to produce, sell, and deliver your product or service to more and more customers in a profitable and cost-effective way. What is yours? According to Geoffrey Colvin of Fortune magazine, many if not most companies are operating on an old business model, one that is partially or totally obsolete. How do you know if you have the correct business model for your business The easiest measure is that your sales and profitability are increasing steadily and predictably. If your sales are erratic or inconsistent, have leveled off, or, even worse, are declining, it could be that your business model no longer works. If this is the case, and you do not change your business model, the end is in sight. |