Are you playing Offense or Defense?

In this ever-changing playing field of business, what position are you taking within your company? Are you playing offense or defense? Or are you in a holding pattern to ride out the storm? As the economy continues to fluctuate, it is forcing companies to do business differently, more effectively, more efficiently, or all of the above. You have a unique opportunity for your business to take the lead, while your competitors vacillate, by taking the position of offense. Savvy businesses are already taking the offense. As a result, they are not feeling the economic crunch as much as others are. They are in a growth mode while everyone else is in a survival mode.

When strategically thinking from an offensive mindset, you are looking at ways your business can be better than anyone else. You are creating a sense of real value in the mind of your customers. Your customers will be attracted to you because they feel they will not get this perceived value anywhere else. Once they realize the value to be real and they believe they are not going to get it anywhere else, they will stay loyal to you.

There are three Best Value Offenses you should consider when defining your strategic advantage against competitors. Of the three, you will focus on two for strategic advantage. They are:

1) Best Total Solutions

2) Best Product/Service

3) Best Price.

Best Total Solutions: To be a best total solutions provider, you want your customers to see you as an expert resource. Your business is the first place your customer thinks to call because if you don’t know the answer, you will either get the answer or know who does have the answer. You are creative and resourceful, bringing to the marketplace unique solutions that no-one else can do as well as you. You are intimately knowledgeable about your customer and how they want to do business. You can anticipate their needs inside your business, as well as outside your business. You keep an extensive referral network in order to effectively be that total resource to your customer. You also share your expertise on a regular basis with your customers so they can gain knowledge in the process in order to make better buying decisions themselves.

Best Product / Service: To be a best product or service provider, you want customers to believe you have the best products or services and then you must continually strive to prove and validate this. A best product or service provider is all about high performance, innovation, or excellence in every sense of the word. If you are stating you have the best product or service, then you are literally declaring a standard for the rest of the industry to step forward and attempt to match or exceed. You most likely have won recognition and acclaim and make being recognized with awards and honors a part of your proof that you are doing something exceptional. Your products or services are at a higher price point, and worth it.

Best Price: Being a best price provider is quite simply being the least expensive. You can also take it to the extreme of being fast and cheap or cheap but in a volume order situation that requires time to receive.

The key to using the Best Value Offense to your advantage is to choose one of these that your company will do better than anyone else in the marketplace. Then choose a second one that you will do as well if not slightly better. Then the third you simply don’t worry about as you cannot do all three. I am going to give you a hint as you start to look at what your company should do offensively. Don’t focus on best price as your number one. And if you do focus on best price being number two, make it competitive and value-added, not the cheapest. Too many small businesses lowered their prices as a means of “temporarily” competing in the last economic downturn, and they are not around to take on the challenge of this one.

Take some time to do some due diligence on your competition and see if you can pinpoint which offenses they might be using. You may be pleasantly surprised that they are not really distinguishing themselves in this manner, giving you a real opportunity to set your company apart and come out a winner now and for a long time to come.

Sherré DeMao is President of SLD Unlimited Marketing/PR Inc., a full-service marketing and public relations firm based in Denver, N.C. Her column seeks to help entrepreneurs and business owners become more savvy marketers and strategists. DeMao can be reached at sherre@sldunlimited.com or 704.483.2941.