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Three Lessons For A Small Business In A Competitive Market
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How To Keep Innovating

Three Lessons For A Small Business In A Competitive Market

It’s a tough world for small business out there right now. When you see global interest rates at record lows, you know the world economy ain’t exactly “booming”!

So if you own a small business and you see customers saving money and choosing wisely about how, where and when they spend their money, what can you do?

Well luckily we have three lessons we can learn from previous tough times.

The first lesson is how to cope with disruption. We know that whenever political, economic social, technological, legislative and environmental changes take place, old business models get disrupted. Take the old manufacturers of camera films – their business was being disrupted, so what did they do…or not do?

Then there’s the lesson about how people talking about you can carve a niche for your business. Early Apple computers became beloved by early-adopters because they “heard” so much about them.

Finally, what about the lesson from being able to provide customers with certainty. How many remember Coca Cola’s foray into “new” taste?

 

 

In a tough business world you have to innovate, stay relevant, and make sure people remember you – and you have to do it over and over again.

In a disrupted competitive market, small players can win if they offer a better customer experience.

Social media, depending on your small business, can be multiple times more effective than traditional advertising.

Find the right balance between flexibility and having established processes so that customers experience certainty, but also have a tailored experience.

Why don’t you go over to teikoh.com to check out more tips, tools, and resources to create powerful strategies, show leadership, and grow your business? Sign up by giving me your name and email and I’ll send these free ideas to your inbox every week. And trust me – I hate spam so I will never trade your details to anyone else!

How To Keep Innovating

“We need to innovate to thrive.”

“Business has to be agile these days.”

“The cheese has moved.”

“Every market sector will face disruption.”

We’ve all heard these phrases haven’t we? “Innovate” and “agile” and “disruption”, what do these trendy words mean?

Well, believe it or not, there’s nothing new under the sun. All these trendy sayings mean something that businesses have had to do for centuries – we all need to move with the times. If you settle, you go the way of Kodak and Blackberry, and in the sense of industries, you face the challenges of the taxi industry in the face of Uber or of the hotel industry when Air BnB is out there.

So you have to innovate. You have to be aware of what is happening around you, to your business, to your customers, to your industry, to your market, and find new ways of doing things or new ways to serve. Yet business success is a game of inches, not Eureka moments.

 

 

If you expect miracles, you set up your mindset for the BIG new thing to invent. This makes people feel nervous because they will find it hard to innovate at such a big leap. So they react by working on what they know, and innovation? Nothing.

You need to shift mindsets – yours and those of your team. Believe that innovation is possible but you do it through small improvements. If people are allowed to change their world with small improvements, then they are not afraid to fail because if they do fail, it’s small. When a good attempt has not succeeded, don’t label it a failure – accept that an experiment has given you a result and ask “what did we learn to do/not to do?”

And remember to measure. Take simple measurements like time saved, or cost saved – feel the progress and celebrate, then look for more.

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See you next week!

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