Planning Weeks 1-2

Describe Your Business’s Competitive Advantage

You’re continually being compared

Almost every purchase, whether by a corporation or a consumer, comes as the result of comparison shopping.

It is not enough that you have conceptualized a solution to a problem or satisfaction of a need.

You must be able to show how your solution is superior to other solutions that already exist.

In this planning step, we help you explore some common ways to gain a competitive edge, such as:

1. Make your solution more convenient to obtain.
2. Offer more variety.
3. Offer training or education along with your product.
4. Offer more customization.

How To Do It

1. You need to review your existing knowledge of the features of your product or service.

You may wish to take out a piece of blank paper and write them down.

An Example: Industrial Health & Safety Consulting

Feature 1 – Offered by an award-winning professional with more than twenty-five years experience.
Feature 2 – Extensive first-hand experience investigating industrial accidents and recommending remediation programs.
Feature 3 – Quick response to all inquiries.

2. Next, we suggest that you utilize the most common tool consumers and businesses use to locate solutions to their problems – Internet search tools.

Enter a 2-3 word phrase that you feel describes your product or service category, such as “industrial health and safety advice”, into google.com or yahoo.com. See what companies are listed in the top ten results.

Spend an hour or so reading the copy of a few of the websites to learn what they say that they offer.

3. Open your Marketing Plan Summary document and scroll down to the section entitled: “Competitive Advantage”.

4. Type in and save brief answers to as many of the comparison criteria as you feel apply to your particular business.