Kick Off Your Successful CompetitionProof New Year

What are you going to do to make sure that your new year is the best that it can be? How are you going to capitalize on the New Economy and be CompetitionProof?

Get Educated

I suggest that you get your competitive edge by focusing on your education. With the poor economy, most people and companies have deferred education or scaled way back. It's time to reverse that trend.

Sales guru Brian Tracy suggests investing three percent of your income into self development and points out that it will return the highest return of any investment you'll make.

I agree with him.

Pay it Forward

The next step is to educate your customer. The most dangerous thing to your competitor is a customer who's educated. Transfer what you've learned to your customer.

To get you started, here's a one-hour program that I delivered earlier this year to an audience of IT sales professionals in Orlando. It's loaded with CompetitionProof ideas that I know that you can use.

I've posted links for all of the recordings mentioned in the audio on this page for your convenience. The link referenced in the program is no longer active.

I wish you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

And let me know what you think!

(download)

Click here to download:
SellingInTheNewEconomyCheatSheet.pdf (50 KB)
(download)

Additional resources mentioned in the program

Get More Business Just By Speaking

Trade Show Secrets and 10 Things Most Companies Do at Trade Shows

Referral Magic and How to Write Letters that Make Your Phone Ring

 

 

 

Change the Competitive Game with Speed

Can you change the competitive game by moving faster?

In the December 2, 2010 New York Times Magazine, Michael Sokolove writes a stunning article, Speed-Freak Football about the University of Oregon’s football team using a speed-play strategy to win football games. The Oregon Ducks don’t just beat their opponents, they embarrass them off the field, winning by up to five touchdowns.  

Ducks head coach, Chip Kelly uses a rapid-fire spread offense that eliminates the huddles and essentially exhausts the opposition by keeping them running the entire game. The team can start a new play as quickly as five seconds after the previous play ended confounding and draining the competition. Often their playing speed limit is how fast the officials can move the down marker chain.

Through 10 games so far, they are unbeaten and averaged 50.7 points a game. The article is a fascinating read about Kelly has transformed the way that the team practices and communicates to create this massive change in how football is played.

In bringing speed to the game, they have become CompetitionProof.

In business, speed wins. If your quality, selection, customer service, and price are equal to your competitors, response time breaks the tie. Whoever is fastest to respond gets the deal. In a competitive environment, rapid response time can correct for competitive defects like a higher price.

You might be thinking, yes, but if I respond too fast, my customer will think it’s easy for me to do, or I have lots of inventory, so I should charge less. You might get a cheap customer to say that, but the vast majority of customers want speedy response and are even willing to pay extra for expedited service.

Consider the magician’s principle: “Make the easy things look difficult and difficult things look easy.” That’s what customers pay for and pay well for.

How can you transform how you approach your business and your customer to increase speed to respond and deliver? It may require altering how you get things done, yet it’s completely worth it if you can change the game to be truly CompetitionProof.
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