ActionPronto – Inspirations and Insights

“E” is for Economics – all of the numbers in your business. Prices, costs, expenses, size of market, potential sales, number of repeats, number of returns, demand … anything that relates to your business’s products and services. You should know your numbers, particularly what it costs you to be in business. Too many business owners I’ve read or heard about, are former owners because they didn’t realize the size of some of their numbers.

As a business owner, you should not delegate the knowledge of these numbers to someone else, like your accountant or your marketing director. You should know where you stand.

The “E” also includes economics from the customer perspective, too. What’s the value to the customer, to buy your products or services? What’s the magnitude of financial benefit your products bring to your customer, in terms of saving time, saving money, or some other measure?

“D” represents “Differentiation”, in the IDEAL business model. Whatever you’re offering, whether they’re tangible products or services, needs to be different from whatever your competitors are offering. If you offer things that are largely the same, or what we call “me too” products, potential customers would more likely stick with competitors who have been around longer and who already have a track record.

Of course, if the competitor’s track record is a lousy one, you could offer the same offering and perhaps get away with it. But even then, since you’re an untested supplier of that product or service, you run the risk of the customer thinking that you might be no different than the lousy competitor.

So make something different: your offering needs to allow the customer to be better, faster, more productive, more relaxed, prettier, younger, stronger, slimmer, smarter, funnier, or whatever, than your competitors can do. Without this differentiation (the “D”), you’ll be viewed the same as the others, with no compelling reason to give you a try.