The Law of Focus: How to Avoid Direct Competition (part 2 of 3)

The Law of Focus: How to Avoid Direct Competition (part 2 of 3)
Click on the title to watch the video on YouTube.
Full transcript to the video:

Sing: "Aint nothin’ like the real thing, baby. Aint nothin’ like the real thing."

Hi, this is Glenn R Harrington of Articulate Consultants. Welcome to the second video of a three-part series in which I describe how to avoid direct competition in business by applying the law of focus. These three videos are intended for people with sales growth, customer loyalty, and referral generation on their minds.

In the first video, I describe how competition could be any alternative a customer considers instead of spending their money on the experience your company offers.

I also raise six questions about customer experience. Good, reliable answers could help your business to avoid direct competition and become better known as the go-to source for a distinct, valued customer experience.

Imagine your company humming along nicely, generating and delivering on a healthy, growing volume of business for happy customers, many of whom keep coming back; many bringing or referring others to you.

In this video, I’ll tell you about the first of two real small, independent companies that came out of difficult times after narrowing their scope and sharpening their key messages to expand their success. That is, after they applied the law of focus.

Each had early success followed by difficult times. Each emerged from its difficult times more focused and less concerned about competitors. Their eventual success has been unmistakably, authentically earned and a result of becoming more widely known for one distinct, essential strength.

I live near the ocean, so let me use nautical terms for what happens during those difficult times that catalyze the transition from small-scale success to real thriving. Key people learn to recalibrate their compass, navigate a better route to success, keep the wind in the sails, and manage on-board resources effectively for the journey to long-term, resilient success.

Example One: the figure-skate blade sharpener.

Imagine yourself the parent of a teenage girl who loves figure skating. You see the good friendships, personal discipline, physical fitness, and other benefits to your daughter – including her happiness. You and your spouse cover most of the costs.

When your daughter was younger, you would take her skates to a local sports store for sharpening. You liked how they would take special care with the spikes at the tips of figure-skate blades.

Even so, you have since learned from your daughter’s friends, their parents, and her skating coach that a certain shop in a nearby city is the best place to go for sharpening.

Those inexperienced with figure skating cannot tell the difference. Figure skaters themselves exude their gratitude for great blade sharpening. That, you learn, comes from this shop an hour’s drive away.

At first, you feel skeptical. Then, you opt to go to the shop in question yourself.

There, you learn not only that this place sharpens an impressive volume of figure-skate blades, but that people from much further away send their skates. You recognize some skaters whose parents make family car trips out of dealing with this place. You see couriers come and go. You even meet the shipping and receiving clerk – somebody whose full-time job is to traffic skates in and out of this shop.

When you meet the owners, you learn a little more about the business. The shop’s history also includes locksmithing and custom machining. They still sharpen lawn-mower blades, knives, and such.

It took some time before they noticed that skate sharpening kept bringing people from near and far willing to pay top price. Customers would book drop-off and pick-up appointments from other cities – most remarkably for figure skate blades. The market for sharpening figure-skate blades held the most potential if they chose to focus on it.

After too many mediocre years as a generalist shop, competing with too many other generalists, they made that choice. The time to focus on operating as a specialty shop had come.

Soon after your return home, you learn that figure skaters who get their blades sharpened at this one shop comprise an elite segment of the regional figure-skating community. Your daughter has become one of the lucky ones, her love of skating strengthened. That you paid top price becomes merely incidental.

Now, what does this tell you about how to get any small business to succeed like that? Here’s a hint: Say the word “sharpening” in the dressing room and every customer of this shop – mostly the top skaters on the rink – instantly know where to go for the best. That’s the law of focus in action.

Sing: "Aint nothin’ like the real thing, baby. Aint nothin’ like the real thing."

Independent small businesses can emerge from challenging times to better fulfil their potential by applying the law of focus. See the third video in this three-part series for more discussion about this, including the second example: another real, thriving company that pulled itself out of tough times. Also, see my related articles at the links below.

Related article – Marketing Tip: Avoid Direct Competition:

http://www.articulate.ca/AvoidDirectCompetition.html

Related article – Three Reasons Why Independent Businesses Need Authentic Key Messages To Succeed:

http://www.articulate.ca/IndependentBusinessNeedKeyMessages.html

Related article – Authenticity Rules: A Reality Check for Creative Advertisers :

http://www.articulate.ca/AuthenticityRules.html

The Law of Focus: How to Avoid Direct Competition (part 1 of 3)

The Law of Focus: How to Avoid Direct Competition (part 1 of 3)
Click on the title to watch the video on YouTube.
Full transcript to the video:

Sing: "Aint nothin’ like the real thing, baby. Aint nothin’ like the real thing."

Hi, this is Glenn R Harrington of Articulate Consultants. In this three-part series, I discuss how independent small businesses can emerge from challenging times to better fulfil their potential by applying the law of focus.

These three videos are intended for people with sales growth, customer loyalty, and referral generation on their minds. If you are concerned about market position, client retention, and the overall success of an independent small business, then pay attention.

The law of focus, applied intelligently, can help any business to become known as the go-to source for the customer experience that defines its brand.

When any experience triggers an emotional response, the intellect or logical capacity of the person feeling that emotional response typically weakens – often to the same extent as the strength of the emotion.

Consumer psychology, emotion, and logic are involved when a company thrives. That thriving itself can define its market niche. To the attentive eye, it can also reveal the ideal client profile and wherever adaptation is needed.

Successes and failures provide useful guidance to those who pay attention, who can then conduct business adaptively, innovatively, and realistically in the presence of competition while remaining authentic.

Now, about competition: Imagine that you are the owner/operator of a Chinese restaurant in North Bay.

You could view all other local Chinese restaurants as your competitors. After all, they could take away business from you when people who want to eat Chinese food go to their restaurants; not yours.

You could instead view the owners and operators of local Chinese restaurants as a mix – from colleagues to competitors.

You could also choose to view all local Chinese restaurants as a distinct business community within the local culture.

Now, imagine this: After a soccer championship game, one group of a dozen people decides to go a restaurant to celebrate. Various restaurants are suggested. Why would they choose your place? Your sechuan eggplant hotpot? Your dan-dan noodles?

After some discussion, they choose the local Mediterranean place for their celebration feast. Not your restaurant. Not any Chinese restaurant.

Next year, it could be any one of the other places considered, or a newcomer. With one trip to the grocery store and one trip to the liquor store, it could be a backyard barbecue instead of any restaurant.

Your restaurant competes with every option that a dozen people after a soccer championship would consider for their celebration.

To get that business next time, your restaurant has to be the hands-down winner in enough people’s minds before the group even decides to go out after the game. That’s how to avoid direct competition.

See my article Marketing Tip: Avoid Direct Competition. It uses the soft-drink industry for examples. You can find a link to the article below.

If you were a plumber in Saskatoon, you might view the local plumbers on a spectrum ranging from associates to adversaries. This could be an accurate perspective.

Even so, the do-it-yourself approach with tools and tips from the local hardware store might actually be your top competition, any day of the year. This leads to an important question.

Under what circumstances does your ideal client buy your services? When they come back for more, why do they do that? What gets them to refer others to you? That’s three questions.

Thee more: For what is your company best known? Why do people bypass your competitors to buy from you? When people buy from you – first time or returning – what does it mean to them?

In any industry, in any city, when people responsible for marketing and brand management gather good, reliable answers to these six questions, by paying attention to their market, and in so doing pay attention to patterns in the thoughts and feelings expressed about the experience of being their customer, they enable themselves.

They enable themselves, through their authentic understanding of the customer experience, to express that experience in the words of the people who loyally pay their company for that experience.

They enable themselves to identify the traits, values, and needs of other people who would pay for that experience if they knew that it was available to them and how to get it.

They enable their marketing and brand management efforts to articulate authentic key messages to the right people through the right media.

They enable their companies to match supply and demand effectively and efficiently because they follow the guidance of their target market to be known as the go-to source for a distinct customer experience.

Sing: "Aint nothin’ like the real thing, baby. Aint nothin’ like the real thing."

In the following videos of this three-part series, I describe how two real independent small businesses applied the law of focus to narrow their scope, sharpen their key messages, and expand their success. Check them out. Also, see my related articles at the links below. I am Glenn R Harrington of Articulate Consultants.

Related article – Marketing Tip: Avoid Direct Competition:

http://www.articulate.ca/AvoidDirectCompetition.html

Related article – Three Reasons Why Independent Businesses Need Authentic Key Messages To Succeed:

http://www.articulate.ca/IndependentBusinessNeedKeyMessages.html

Related article – Authenticity Rules: A Reality Check for Creative Advertisers :

http://www.articulate.ca/AuthenticityRules.html

Three Reasons Why Independent Businesses Need Authentic Key Messages To Succeed

Three Reasons Why Independent Businesses Need Authentic Key Messages To Succeed

1. Avoid Direct Competition.

Whether your company operates clothing boutiques, sells insurance and investment products, or makes violins by custom-order, it’s the same. The availability of substitutes or alternatives has grown while communications technology has rendered the world a global village. Because of this, a company not seen as irreplaceable (must-see experts, the leading product, or the highest overall value) increasingly becomes positioned as one of many.

This is how trying harder and doing things that reduce profit margins (e.g. discounting prices, reducing commissions, providing free shipping anywhere) become default ways of competing for business. These can reduce overall profitability and can shorten the life of a company.

With credible, meaningful, authentic key messages, an independent company can claim its turf as must-see experts or the leading product or the highest overall value for its unique value proposition. By doing this effectively, not only can a company avoid direct competition but even grow in service to its niche, serving a broader geographic market than it would serve otherwise, courtesy of the same communications technologies that make intelligently focused niche marketing so important today.


2. Deepen customer loyalty.

A key message concisely communicates identity and purpose, ideally in terms that the target market accepts instantly. Thus, not only can an effective key message (e.g. name, motto, value proposition) gain intuitive acceptance but it can also strike a chord with the values of the market.

Key messages that authentically affirm and harmonize with the market’s values can deepen the sense of personal alignment that loyal clients already feel. This can better ensure their continued purchasing, more business per customer over a given period, and more referrals.

For example, the motto Nothing runs like a Deere from John Deere Corp has transformed some loyal users of John Deere equipment into more dedicated customers. The slogan is so right for some people that it catalyzes their brand loyalty to the point where they do not envision themselves owning any other brand. They talk like it, too. This makes them like an unpaid sales force for John Deere. The rightness of that motto for them encapsulates an overall-positive brand experience into something more.


3. A narrower focus gives a broader reach.

Independent businesses that use authentic key messages to distinguish themselves from competitors and develop greater depth of relationship with their customers often find that narrowing their focus (e.g. from generalists to specialists) is inevitable.

To some, a narrower focus intuitively means limitation and sacrificed opportunity. In some cases, this could be true. On the other hand, independent businesses that narrow their focus often discover that the strengthened status as a specialist brand draws more new business from further afield.

Suppose you go to your family doctor with some health problem. The doctor prescribes treatment and instructs you to return if the condition does not improve in a short time. After a short time, you return with poor results. The doctor then refers you to a specialist.

It’s inconvenient to see the specialist. Yet, you accept this. Care for your ailment has escalated. The specialist assesses your situation and refers you to a more specialized expert in your situation.

Further inconvenience to see the third doctor does not stop you. According to the first two doctors, your medical situation makes it necessary. You view the third doctor as offering the best care and of highest importance in treating your condition.

This principle applies in business situations too. The more a company is perceived as having special expertise, the higher the market values its products and services and the broader its geographic reach.

For the independent business that intelligently uses authentic key messages in its marketing and brand management, competition can be reduced or avoided entirely, customer loyalty increased, and customers willing to pay more could come from farther away. These are three reasons why independent businesses need authentic, compelling key messages to succeed today.


– Glenn R. Harrington, Articulate Consultants Inc.