Business leaders want to grow sales, improve profits and enjoy what they are doing. Traditional approaches focus on cutting costs, selling more of the same and, basically, doing more of what ‘works’. When customers fail to buy again, the question most often asked – “What happened?”
Disruption is a better strategy. Disruption changes the way customers look at you. Disruption is about re-thinking the customer experience. In the past, if you were told about a new book, you went to a bookstore. Then came Amazon. Borders fought them by saying, people like to touch a book before they buy it. How did that work out for them?
In Albany, right now, taxi companies are digging in and fighting Uber. They too, will lose. Disruption is a constant in our world. Cars over horses, planes over trains and supermarkets over corner stores. Instead of fighting it, embrace it!
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Disruption is often big and capital intensive. It is more often small – and within your control. When the price of wire went out of a control, a local company found a supplier who was willing to sell hem a full container. He was able to hold his prices through the crisis and gained more customers.
Another built an extremely efficient internet ordering system. They produce higher quality products delivered economically and quickly. Almost all of their orders come through a web site and 99% are out of this market. Yet another focused on new ways to deliver their service. They built a delivery platform with software that broke the traditional 1 person for ‘x’ customers model. They continue to disrupt by using their larger size to negotiate with vendors. They have never had to raise prices!
You can disrupt your business too. Start with a basic question I ask all clients – “if you were to start your business today, with current revenue and customer numbers, would you organize the same way?” The answer is always no. Figure what customers want and how they want it delivered. It is the base of all disruption by small businesses.