One Coach

This post is the second in a series of excerpts from OneCoach CEO John Assaraf’s interview with Rita Gunther McGrath, co-author of The Entrepreneurial Mindset, and MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves that Drive Exceptional Business Growth. See the first post in this series here.

In order to avoid becoming complacent with your clients, you’ve got to keep your eyes open. Creating benchmarks in the market will help you compare key ratios with those of your competition, comparing factors such as customer-referral propensity. You should also always be on the lookout for word-of-mouth and referral business. Were your clients happy enough with you to refer you to somebody else?

Measure your metrics to gauge whether these clients are falling off, and if you’re getting unique visitors. And even if you’re in a low-competition market, you should still practice “fire drills.” Create a ghost competitor to develop tactics to deal with competition and stay sharp. Not only are you preparing yourself for the possibility of a surge in market competition, you’re pushing yourself to achieve better results right now, which means more money.

One of the best ways to rise above the competition is through differentiation. If you remain the same as the next guy, then the only thing your customer really has to go on are factors such as price or convenience. And if you get them on price, then chances are you’ll lose them on price – it’s simply not a sufficient tie to create loyalty and hold them to you.

Your differentiating factor is also known as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This may require you to take some time and look at your business instead of from within – it could be your vast service experience, a fanatical client experience, 360-degree environment of amazing business, the knowledge of your trade staff, anything. This is absolutely essential when your product is identical to countless others.

This all falls under the Blue Ocean Strategy of differentiating yourself, so much that you’re not even in the same space as anybody else. So instead of competing against the bombardment of marketing and advertising out there, you’ve essentially created your own market. 

Up next: Enhancing the customer experience

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