I’m about halfway through the book Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. The gist of the book is that if you can find a new way to provide goods or services or a whole new market, then you can make the competition irrelevant and be a unique provider in a calm blue ocean of marketplace. No longer will you be stuck in the churning bloodbath or “red ocean” of competition with others who all provide the same products or services and are forced to compete by price-cutting or other sales tactics with no hope of taking over meaningful market share.
To make your competition irrelevant, you have to take an in-depth look at what you and your competitors all do:
- Determine what truly has value to the customer (to do more of this)
- Uncover what the customer doesn’t care about (to reduce or eliminate)
- Look outside of your existing marketplace to see if there is untapped potential for creating a new service or product to address needs of people who do not do business with you today (untapped potential customers)
The hardest part is to put aside your preconceived ideas of your industry and open your mind to think of new ways to solve your customer’s needs. I’ve been in the technology field for over 20 years, so this has been easier said than done, but it’s a great mental exercise.
Think about your own business. Do you do things because “that’s the way it’s done”? What could you eliminate or reduce without hurting the customer experience? What could you increase or create to enhance the customer experience and set yourself apart from the competition - possibly even creating something never offered before? What if you could recapture past clients that you had lost, new clients who chose a competitor, and potential clients with demands that are not being met in your marketplace?
If you have ideas for us to consider for what you’d like to see if anything was possible for technology support or web sites, or if you would like to brainstorm about your business to get an outside perspective, I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment on the blog or email me at tlf@foresitetech.com.
The bottom-line with LinkedIn is that people would much rather work with people who their friends and colleagues know and trust. To truly realize a return on the investment of time required by LinkedIn you need to increase your number of viable connections and thus increase your chances of getting more business. In order to make your profile more appealing you need to nurture it by being committed to completing at least one or two LinkedIn tasks every single day. Make a connection, join a group, or just enhance your profile. Be sure to track the traffic to your website and what percentage of it comes from LinkedIn.