Are You The Disruptor or the Disruptee

With change comes opportunity, but are you the one doing the disrupting?  Or is your competition forcing you to catch up?  When executed properly, disruption will open new opportunities while squashing some of your competition’s advantages, not so much putting them out of business.  Driving your competition crazy is essentially a deliberate process that can yield very tangible results.

To lay a firm foundation, try these following steps:

1.  Find a Powerful Enemy

An enemy can be a positive or a negative force, depending on that enemy’s capabilities. Small or weak enemies will drain your energy instead of energizing you. They won’t force you to make yourself better. Find a fight and an enemy worth fighting.

2.  You’ve Got To Know Who You Are

Do you know what your business really is? If you think you’re in the food business, for instance, perhaps you should consider yourself as being in the making-people-happy business. Do you know where you want to be in the next decade? You can’t survive a long time without long-range thinking.

Who is your competitor and why are they getting your customers?

3.  You’ve Got To Know Your Customers

Meet them, talk with them, and listen to them, but be careful about the extent to which you implement what you hear. Customers can spot a problem, and they usually know their immediate needs. However, they rarely know what they will need in five years.

4.  You’ve Got to Know Your Enemy

Have you shopped in your competitor’s store? Have you bought your competitor’s product? Seeing how they treat customers, use displays, handle returns, and conduct business can help you determine what you should be doing. Learn about the big things –your competitor’s mission statement, goals, strengths, and weaknesses –and the nitty-gritty things –the competitor’s creative processes, ways of soliciting feedback, and attitudes toward pricing, discounts, and returns. Once you know how the competition moves, you can move faster.

Remember of all things, to maintain your edge.  Keep delighting your customers, and to never tell anything you don’t what your competitor to know..

In Your Success,

JT Foxx

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www.millionaireunderdog.com
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