The business landscape is changing faster than ever before. Across all industries, changes are occurring in technology, communications, product and service delivery, workforce expectations and the demands of customers. Competition is increasing, and newer, more innovative companies are taking market share from those who are more established. For your business to thrive in this evolving environment, you must pay attention to the following key elements.
Market Positioning
This is how you are positioning your products or services in the marketplace. If you basically offer the same products or services as others, and say your service is better or that you care more, you are not effectively positioning your company. Everyone says these same things. If your products or services look like your competitors and sound like your competitors, the only way for new and existing customers to decide to do business with you is based on price. And someone is always willing to do things cheaper.
You must be able to clearly state, from a customer point of view, how the benefits you provide are different than those offered by anyone else in your space. Only this type of effective positioning allows you to stand out from the crowd and attract the type of business you want from competitors, regardless of price.
Customer Engagement
Every transaction with a new customer, should begin a journey leading to deeper engagement with your brand. This includes repeat sales, exploration of different product lines, loyalty, positive reviews and referrals. Many companies simply provide a customer transaction and sit back waiting for the customer to call them again when they have a new need, but it’s essential to be more proactive.
Create effective systems and processes to ensure that you begin providing something of ongoing value to each and every customer. Engage them with your brand and create value through every interaction.
Influence
Influence is a form of leadership. Are you an influencer within your industry? The simple way to answer this is to look at how many people are following you. If you are not actively publishing content, speaking at conferences, or holding regular educational events, you are not demonstrating influence.
Influence allows you to reach a larger audience, not just your current customers. It allows you to share information about your company and become relevant in the lives of a broader base of potential customers, before they are ready to enter the sales cycle. The broader your base of influence, the more opportunities your business will enjoy.
Change Management
One of the biggest challenges for many organizations is change. The business landscape is changing faster than ever before. All successful organizations must have systems and processes that allow for effective change and evolution to easily happen.
Key elements for effective change management include leadership which supports active change, clear process documentation, an empowered culture where employees utilize economic thinking, clearly defined decision rights, and an effective challenge process to ensure that beneficial alterations can happen quickly and easily. With these elements in place, change does not get bogged down and everyone on the team is able to help continuously evolve the organization leading to greater success.
Trend Identification
All successful businesses must become astute at identifying and reacting to trends within their industry and the broader trends shaping our world. How will the landscape within your industry look in the next 3-5 years? What changes in the world (technology, communications, etc.) that will impact how your customers think and behave? Which will impact or provide new opportunities for you?
By spending some time thinking about this each year, documenting it and reviewing this, you will get better at planning how your business can turn change into a competitive advantage.
About Webolutions
At Webolutions, we work with our clients in all the areas outlined above. Our passion is working with visionary organizations who want to something amazing in the world. We help by providing the insights and systems which enable them to thrive. Feel free to give us a call if you’d like to chat. Here is to a great 2018
