Competitive Advantage is Everything
I recently attended my Rotary District’s annual conference. Like most conferences, everybody gets a name badge and with Rotary you also have a choice of ribbons to show your offices held, contribution levels to the foundation, etc.
Everybody puts on the ribbons cascading down from the bottom of the name badge; everybody except me that is. I put them on all four sides to make a nice border. It was sure a conversation starter and for most people it seemed interesting as it set me apart from the crowd. There were some people however, who just couldn’t fathom what I had done (because it wasn’t what everybody else was doing).
The business lesson here is that your business, whether a one-person services firm or a large multi-product and service organization, needs to stand out from the crowd. You can’t be like every other business. I preach to business buyers and owners that a company’s competitive advantage is what makes it special and increases its value. This means there is something special that has customers pay enough for your product so that you can make a profit.
“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.” Jack Welsh