Competitive Advantage

If you have not had the time or opportunity to read Creating Competitive Advantage by Jaynie L. Smith, I strongly recommend it to all business, sales, and marketing people. Understanding your company's or your personal competive advantages at all times is essential to compete in our modern business world.

In the current economic situation facing our country and world, competitive advantage is as important as ever. In fact, now is the time to use your advantages to position your business or yourself to fully take advantage of the recovery when it occurs.

Now is the time to explore and understand what natural advantages you have over your competitors and develope and utilize those advantages. If you can outsmart your competitors, this costs nothing but will pay dividends. If your tenure in your marketplace is your strength, now is the time to play that hand to the fullest.

Every business and every person has some advantages over their competition. Figure out what they are. Write them down and put them to work for you. When you are asked in so many words, Why should I do business with you, or Why should I promote you, or Why should I hire you, be prepared. Be prepared by fully understanding what your competitive advantages are so that you can use them.

What About Relationships in Business

In The Fred Factor, Sanborn states "Indifferent people deliver impersonal service." I am not suggesting that you need to be best friends with your customers, co-workers, and bosses. I am suggesting that you get to know them on a professional level so that your interactions with them will have some foundation.

How do you feel when you are treated with indifference? No matter how good of a product or service that a company or organization provides, isn't it disappointing when the person who is your contact interacts with you with indifference? We all want to validated as people of significance.

In dealing with your customers, collegues, supervisors, look them in the eyes, get to know where they are coming from, and deal with them according to the feedback you are receiving. You can be firm but polite if you have a difference of opinion. You can respond with dignity if you feel dissed.

On the other hand, when you go the extra distance to understand these individuals, you will be able to deliver the service that they both want and need. When they know you have done so, they will appreciate you and the relationship grows. I believe that Sanborn was making exactly this point with that comment.

Set Your Standards Higher

In his inspiring book The Fred Factor, author Mark Sanborn claims, "Setting a higher standard is more challenging than simply achieving the status quo ... the more value you create in your work or your interaction with others, and more value will eventually flow toward you.

How high can you set your personal standards?

Are you happy just to have a place to call your job?

That doesn't cut it anymore because in the competitive environment of today, you MUST set your standards high. You must keep learning, growing, and stiving for excellence. If you do that, you really won't have to worry about your job because you will be a person who adds value to your company and you will be a highly desirable employee to your current company.

If for any reason your current job ends and you have continued to strive for higher standards, you will be very employable to other companies and have an advantage over other candidates.

Work on yourself every day and you will add value to your company and to yourself.

What a Great Day for America

Pausing from my normal course of posts, I say that President Barack Obama will do great things for America. Yes we have many challenges. I can't think of anyone who is better qualified to take the reins of this great country than President Obama.

Congratulations America!

Make Your Difference Positive

Dr. Marting Luther King, Jr. once said, "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'"

All too many people are satisfied with medocrity. If that is the case, their difference is negative. Not only do the acheivers make a difference, the mediocre do too. Everyone makes a difference and if you are on a team where everyone is striving to make a positive difference, you are on a winning team.

As Dr. King implied, it doesn't really matter what it is that you do, but it greatly matters how you do it. If you spend every day trying to make a positive difference, you will. If you approach both your work life and personal life with that same zeal for a positive impact, you will achieve great things.

Everyone Makes a Difference

Here are some more insights from the excellent book The Fred Factor. A quote from Abraham Lincoln asks you "Whatever you are, be a good one." Fred claims, "Quality and excellence should be the goals of every person in every business or profession. I agree whole heartedly with both statements.

If you view your job as just a job, it would be almost impossible to follow either of the above two phrases of wisdom. Your job is actually your career, and your career is part of your identity. Both are to be taken very seriously. Actually, you are self employed. Your employer is your biggest client and they deserve your very best work.

We can't say enough about self improvement as it relates to both your career and your personal life. Every day should be another step toward excellence in all that you do. Never settle for mediocrity.

If every person in your company was committed to excellence and quality, your company would be guaranteed success and every employee would enjoy a fruitful career. If every employee chooses to be excellent, then the outcome of overall success is very predictable.

No matter what you do in life, there are choices that you can make to bring success to you and your company. Every day presents new choices and if you choose excellence, great results will follow.

The Fred Factor

If you have not had a chanced to read the book "Fred Factor" by Mark Sanborn, I highly recommend it. I know that these are difficult economic times. But, you don't have to wait until the recovery to work on self-improvement.

First of all, start reading every day in your area of specialty. One book that I have found to be most helpful is "Fred Factor. Here is a sample quote. "You Must Continually Create Value For Others, And I Doesn't Have to Cost a Penny."

Interesting, read more.