thinking/critical

All business owners must differentiate or compete on price, but the stakes are much higher for designer businesses. Differentiation on design is the primary argument for maintaining higher prices, and failure to do so undermines the entire business premise. Do you know which questions to ask when establishing your pricing strategy?

When a company fails to establish compelling reasons to buy its products, it is reduced to competing on price. This is market reactivity as a form of strategy, and it’s an excellent formula for going out of business. Don’t set your business up to fail. Follow sound strategic principles to differentiate your business and remove yourself from the price game.

Of all the companies that use the Internet for business intelligence, those who have a talent for finding the meaning and patterns behind the noise will benefit the most.

Most of us spend our lives growing into an ability to face reality, only to find out that reality isn’t all its cracked up to be. After all, it can’t take you anywhere else but here, can it?

The biggest danger to a business owner is lack of originality – generally demonstrated by virtue of getting trapped in his or her industry’s trends. Industry trend following simply turns your business into a commodity business. Avoid the trap, and maintain your margins.

The changes you choose to make now will have tremendous impact on the success you can expect in the future. Too many companies are cutting loose important (strategic) talent, eliminating their advertising budgets, changing their marketing strategies, and reducing their operations to customer-unfriendly shells in fear-fueled efforts to survive.

Our increasingly complex world creates consumers who seek familiarity and recognizable patterns to ease their decision-making. Business owners who sell their differences while making themselves seem very familiar will achieve the greatest success.

The difference between small and large business is a difference of scale. All the same things need to be done, from sales to service, from information management to product development, from ordering supplies to cleaning the bathroom. And don’t forget the taxman. It is no surprise that business owners find themselves far far from the activities that drive revenue and profits – and they don’t know how they got there. This small exercise could mean the difference between a day well spent, and a day sent down the well.