ActionPronto – Inspirations and Insights

And finally, the “L” in IDEAL stands for “loyalty”. This is the element that makes your business model tick; the ability for you to create a customer or client experience that keeps them coming back for more. Even more importantly, their customer experience with you is so awesome, they want other people they know to experience it too, so they refer you.

I like to say that this “L” results in two “R’s” — repeats and referrals. Repeat business is very valuable for you to have, because it doesn’t cost you very much to continue receiving this. And referrals are valuable too, because they drastically lower your cost of acquiring a new customer.

So keep the elements of my IDEAL business model in mind. It could lead you to fulfillment and prosperity in your business. It certainly has for me, for past and present businesses that I’ve owned.

Getting back to my concept of the IDEAL business model, we come to “A”, which stands for “advantage”. Your products and/or services must have some sort of advantage over your competition, some of which may already have greater share of business than you do right now. Looking at it another way, there must be some advantage for your customers to do business with you, compared to whichever competitor they’re using now.

An advantage could come through price, features/benefits, having a patent on a new technology, or even just being repeatedly more dependable than any other supplier. Whatever the advantage, try to build one that is sustainable. A price advantage, for example, is mostly temporary — until your competitors drop their prices too. Building and demonstrating a sustainable competitive advantage is the ticket to gaining market share.