5.15.80: DISCIPLINE #8 - FUTURE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE & HOW WE DO BUSINESS - WILLIAM EASTMAN

Today's Show focuses on Part 1 of 3 on determining your business's Future Competitive Advantage - How You Do Business. Next week will cover (2) Your Offer, and close out Discipline 8 with (3) Your Biz Model.

​PROFIT RADIO - "A Network of Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs"

Introduction
​We introduced the 5.15.80 Model at the beginning of the Season. It was a combination of research into small business performance and our practical experience from the last 2 decades. You could go to any area around the global with a market based economy and randomly select 1,000 companies, here is the distribution you would find: 5% or 50 companies that own their markets, 15% or 150 companies that are making money, and 80% or 800 companies that are barely surviving.

This series is about how to move from one level up and our concern in this series is the 5%, not how you get here which which is covered in the 15% series; the focus now is how to SUSTAIN market leadership.

LISTEN > ENGAGE > APPLY

Show Objectives
Today we start Discipline 8 of the 9. As we covered in previous shows each discipline is present in 3 parts. Today our focus is on one of only two ways to gain/hold competitive advantage How You Do Business. Next week is the other option "Your Offer".

Key Issues - Owner Perspective:

1. What should I do to improve how the customer uses our products & services, and their experience doing business with us?

What You Need to Know
2 Tracks to pursue - how the customer uses what we sell, and what is it like doing business with us. Don't confuse this with results expectations for the product or service purchased. We are separating these two critical issues with focus on what the customer can expect next week. This week - what is it like trying to make it work and how difficult are you to do business with.

How the Customer Uses the Offer?

• How Intuitive? Do you need an YouTube video or Owners Manual to open the box?
• How many steps required from start to result?
• How much attention is required?
• How many hands are required?
• Do you need any tools and is it specialized?

How does the Customer Experience Your Company?

• What are the customer touchpoints?
• What are the coffee stains that allow for unfair assessment of your company?

What You Need to Do
Using the Offer

1. Create relevant build specifications and customer requirements
2. Co-develop using agile teams to build the prototype
3. Create focus groups outside of the initial client (first sale) to determine suitability and additional improvements
4. Check results from build specs and customer requirements
5. Upgrade and Release

User Experience

1. Map the customer's experience from first contact to after servicing
2. Determine the coffee stains from the customers perspective
3. Assign the touchpoints and coffee stains 
4. Measure the experience

Example Website UX (Using the Offer):

• Useful: how does it enable the user to achieve their objectives?
• ​Usable: how easy is it to find?
• Credible: how do we reduce the risk of doing business with us or purchasing the offer?
• Desirable: impact of branding, image, packaging, aesthetics, on emotional connection?
• Assessible: how does it perform on multiple platforms?
• Valuable: price per solution - what multiple does the customer get?

Next Week - Discipline 8 of 5.15.80: Owning the Future Competitive Advantage - 'Your Offer".

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