Do Business Well

So far, we have talked about projects that may take as little time to complete as a week or as much as several years. When a client replaces its computer systems or sets up a business-to-business exchange, the involvement, though lengthy, is finite with a specific beginning and end.

Here we focus on providing ongoing coaching and value- adding services to collaborators for as long as they are needed or wanted. The market leaders that excel at offering them stand out as much for their insight and knowledge as for their clear understanding of customers‘ specific and evolving needs. At the root of their success is the capacity to form genuinely respectful, trusting, close relationships with their clients. Not unlike the relationships that doctors, clerics, lawyers, and other confidants form with their patients and clients, these suppliers get to know and understand their customers, hence are far more able to guide and advise them on myriad circumstances. Continue Reading »

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Market strategy number two is a logical outgrowth of the concept of core competencies, which is the idea that, in a world where specialists increasingly outperform generalists, a business should focus on what it does best and what is essential to its success. All other tasks should be farmed out to people who perform them better. Consistent with that credo, more companies are having components assembled by someone else, as well as delegating chores that include payroll, bookkeeping, manufacturing, even research and development, to specialists who have the scale of operations to perform them efficiently. Allocating as much of what you aren’t good at to someone who is better will free your own time and capital to devote to myriad other tasks. Continue Reading »

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The first winning strategy, seen from the suppliers’ perspective, is to get the clients with whom they are collaborating up and running. This strategy addresses the problems customers find most vexing when they change or upgrade their technical (and other) products, including the compatibility between the new and existing products and the effects that the new products will have on established practices and work habits.

Buying a stand-alone product (such as a new software application for personal use or a new power tool) may involve a tricky installation and can take time to master, but the aggravation is almost always temporary. Regrettably, this is not the case when we acquire products that need to be integrated into existing systems, or that mandate a serious overhaul not only of our technology, which would be complicated enough, but of how we operate our businesses or run our lives. Continue Reading »

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