HOW TO STAND OUT FROM THE COMPETITION

Amelia Earhart was the third person to fly across the Atlantic... so why do we know her name and not Bert's? Because she was a woman; she was DIFFERENT!

We've all seen the companies that claim to have been in business forever.

To a startup, this is frighting because everyone knows who they are.

So how do you beat an older company with tons of experience?

You see, anything that can be considered good can also be considered bad.

While someone might say, "they've been in business forever!" Another person might say, "yeah, and their tools are old, their pricing is high, their technicians are lazy and their methods are outdated."

Ouch!

So, you be a modern company with new tools, cutting edge training and state-of-the-art services.

You could even raise your prices higher than your ancient competition with this approach!

Now let's talk about some real examples.

These furniture companies had similar products, pricing and customer service.

Can you name a huge difference between them?

At IKEA, the furniture is modern, yet inexpensive. While other home furniture stores spend money delivering and assembling products for you, IKEA, allows you to take the furniture home and make it yourself. This increases the fun, excitement and speed of buying furniture all while minimizing the cost.

 

IKEA is the MARKET LEADER of home furnishings because they did things completely different .

Let's check out another example.

 

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey dominated the circus space since 1919 when they merged due to bad economic conditions.

Since that time, no circus came close to challenging their dominance. Their animals were bigger, their performers were more daring, their marketing had a bigger reach and their prices were incontestable.

So how did Cirque du Soleil crush a 150 year old circus empire in just 10 years?

 

Cirque du Soleil did almost the opposite of everything Ringling Brothers did.

They ditched the controversial animal acts.

They signed the best talent from around the word, instead of just training talent from within.

The put on elaborate theatrical musicals with costumes, singing and themes instead of just random clown music and sporadic movement.

Finally, they set their prices high, and didn't allow coupons.

All of this culminated perfectly to set the stage for an upscale, luxury circus that appealed to more sophisticated audiences.

Eventually, Cirque du Soleil went totally mainstream and put Ringling Bros. out of business.

 

Blockbuster was the industry leader in video rentals.

They created a family-video store that refused to carry pornography, and had a beautiful layout, logo and brand that made visiting the store a family event.

It's easy to see why they believed the benefit of visiting a video store was inseparable from move renting.

So, when Netflix (a mail order movie rental company) offered to sell their company to Blockbuster in 2000, Blockbuster refused.

After all, Blockbuster was already set up to allow people to rent movies via mail order, and didn't think a new brand would be a major threat.

Netflix didn't waste any time branding their company as the leader in mail-order movie rental.

It wasn't that they were the first ones to do it, they were the first ones to launch a national marketing presence as well as an ingenuous pricing and mail-order startegy.

For example, instead of charging people by the rental as Blockbuster was doing, Netflix billed people monthly, thereby making customers loyal, and wanting to rent as many movie as possible from Netflix.

Now people weren't just renting movies from Netflix, they were FORCED not to rent from Blockbuster!

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said this regarding the move to subscription based rental: "we began to grow exponentially overnight."

Image courtesy of vdocipher.com

If you're not going to do things differently, you're going to be just another business commodity.

Maybe you're happy being just another can of soup on the shelf at a local food store.

But if you want more market share, more market dominance and more revenue than you ever dreamed, write down exactly how your competition delivers services/products, and find ways to do those things differently, all while minimizing costs and maximizing revenue.

It's not easy, but I know you can do it!

Good luck!

We've all seen the companies that claim to have been in business forever.

To a startup, this is frighting because everyone knows who they are.

So how do you beat an older company with tons of experience?

You see, anything that can be considered good can also be considered bad.

While someone might say, "they've been in business forever!" Another person might say, "yeah, and their tools are old, their pricing is high, their technicians are lazy and their methods are outdated."

Ouch!

So, you be a modern company with new tools, cutting edge training and state-of-the-art services.

You could even raise your prices higher than your ancient competition with this approach!

Now let's talk about some real examples.

These furniture companies had similar products, pricing and customer service.

Can you name a huge difference between them?

At IKEA, the furniture is modern, yet inexpensive. While other home furniture stores spend money delivering and assembling products for you, IKEA, allows you to take the furniture home and make it yourself. This increases the fun, excitement and speed of buying furniture all while minimizing the cost.

 

IKEA is the MARKET LEADER of home furnishings because they did things completely different .

Let's check out another example.

 

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey dominated the circus space since 1919 when they merged due to bad economic conditions.

Since that time, no circus came close to challenging their dominance. Their animals were bigger, their performers were more daring, their marketing had a bigger reach and their prices were incontestable.

So how did Cirque du Soleil crush a 150 year old circus empire in just 10 years?

 

Cirque du Soleil did almost the opposite of everything Ringling Brothers did.

They ditched the controversial animal acts.

They signed the best talent from around the word, instead of just training talent from within.

The put on elaborate theatrical musicals with costumes, singing and themes instead of just random clown music and sporadic movement.

Finally, they set their prices high, and didn't allow coupons.

All of this culminated perfectly to set the stage for an upscale, luxury circus that appealed to more sophisticated audiences.

Eventually, Cirque du Soleil went totally mainstream and put Ringling Bros. out of business.

 

Blockbuster was the industry leader in video rentals.

They created a family-video store that refused to carry pornography, and had a beautiful layout, logo and brand that made visiting the store a family event.

It's easy to see why they believed the benefit of visiting a video store was inseparable from move renting.

So, when Netflix (a mail order movie rental company) offered to sell their company to Blockbuster in 2000, Blockbuster refused.

After all, Blockbuster was already set up to allow people to rent movies via mail order, and didn't think a new brand would be a major threat.

Netflix didn't waste any time branding their company as the leader in mail-order movie rental.

It wasn't that they were the first ones to do it, they were the first ones to launch a national marketing presence as well as an ingenuous pricing and mail-order startegy.

For example, instead of charging people by the rental as Blockbuster was doing, Netflix billed people monthly, thereby making customers loyal, and wanting to rent as many movie as possible from Netflix.

Now people weren't just renting movies from Netflix, they were FORCED not to rent from Blockbuster!

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said this regarding the move to subscription based rental: "we began to grow exponentially overnight."

Image courtesy of vdocipher.com

If you're not going to do things differently, you're going to be just another business commodity.

Maybe you're happy being just another can of soup on the shelf at a local food store.

But if you want more market share, more market dominance and more revenue than you ever dreamed, write down exactly how your competition delivers services/products, and find ways to do those things differently, all while minimizing costs and maximizing revenue.

It's not easy, but I know you can do it!

Good luck!