.
2. Improve your product in areas which clients consider important but in which everyone is pretty much the same.
For example, 5 years ago, 0-60mph for a sports car was 5 seconds. It was the price of entry. Sports car buyers really care about that metric, so manufacturers began improving on it. Today, the POE is about 3.5 seconds, and any respectable sports sedan does 5.
On a more realistic bent: SouthMotors has Sunday hours for its service department. Any talk with any service client will quickly reveal that taking your car in for service is a major inconvenience. Having Sunday hours pays off handsomely in increased business for South.
However, make sure that the improvements are cost-efficient for you. Improving your turnaround time on taxes, for example, might require extra personnel but clients might only see a slight improvement and not want to pay for it.
Do your (math) homework
3. Ruthlessly forget about everything else.
Edit it out. Dump it! If your clients don’t care about “fast turnaround” don’t flog it on them!
4. Finally, if you have serious problems in areas about which clients do care about… fix them.
If you are a car dealer and do NOT have a shuttle… get one. Or do a deal with Uber. If you are a CPA and can’t deliver files ready to be printed in password protected emails… what exactly are you waiting for? An engraved invitation to the 21st Century?
As I mentioned previously… this grid will help you focus on the factors in which you excell and which clients care about, but it demands that you view your business objectively, coldly, and from the point of view of the consumer.
Next week, defining your target groups and the strategies needed to persuade them.
Related articles:
Part 1: Small Business Building the Better Marketing Mousetrap