Most CEO’s don’t understand that complete market dominance is an option available to their company. There is a company in Las Vegas named Shuffle Master, Inc. that owns over 97% of the entire market of card shufflers used in casinos around the world. Binney & Smith is a company located in Easton, Pennsylvania that owns more than 97% of the crayon market worldwide. Then there is a guy by the name of Bill Gates that is attempting to accomplish a similar market share for Microsoft with a software operating system. These three companies know that dominating a market is an option! I will be the first to admit that these types of results of dominance by a company or product are not available to every business. But, I believe that every CEO would be willing to admit that their company does not possess the market share that they should. Why does your company not own a greater market share than it does today? Why are your competitors existing and making a profit with the exact same product or service as yours? There are only a few reasons why your company does not dominate the market place similar to Shuffle Master, Binney & Smith or Microsoft.
Your competitors offer more value with their product or service than your company. More value does not necessarily mean a lower price. It means that they are giving the client a better deal for their money. When the prospective clients recognize this, they do not buy from you. This may sound very elementary, but it is true. If your company is not offering the best value to the marketplace, you should not even expect to win the sale. Many traditional sales training programs are designed for companies that believe all competitors are equal. The following list consists of sales related tasks that are essential to generate more business:
Execute more cold calling.
Provide training for better product knowledge for the sales team.
Train the sales force on better selling techniques.
Work harder than the competitor’s sales force.
Increase the sales and marketing budgets and advertise more.
All of these issues are good, but they do not fix the underlining problem. The company needs to develop an approach to offer more value and a better deal than any of your competitors. There are many, many ways to accomplish this. You need to ask your management team or sales force the question: If you were a target client of our business, what would convince you to buy from our company instead of our competitors? If your team cannot readily answer the question, you have a lot of work to do. You need to offer the marketplace an exciting, real, interesting, quantifiable, recognizable and convincing reason for the clients to buy from your company. Reasons such as: “the company has been in business for 140 years” or “we offer good service,” are not interesting or exciting. Your clients expect good service so therefore you are stating the obvious and not separating your company from your competitors. You must innovate. You must develop an inside reality and an outside perception that creates a competitive edge for your clients.
The marketplace believes that your competitors offer more value with their product or service than your company. Let’s make the assumption that your company does offer the best value, but the prospective clients are not aware of it. In other words, if the marketplace knew the facts about your company, they would be complete idiots to do business with any other company than yours. The problem is they are doing business with your competition and you need to do something about it. The only possible reason this is happening is your strategic marketing plan does not effectively inform and foster potential clients to influence them to buy from your company. Your advertising message may be attempting to convey your organization’s obvious superior value compared to your competitors but your prospects either are not seeing the ad, don’t believe it or don’t think about your company at the time when they are ready to make the purchase.
In order to resolve this problem, you need to identify your prospective clients and gather information. Your organization needs to develop a sequence of clear, compelling and articulated marketing statements that are directed at each of the possible concerns and build trust and/or brand awareness over time. The bottom line is you are educating the marketplace about your company and why it is a “better deal” to buy from you than your competitors. This master marketing plan should be carefully executed with the entire prospective client base to lead them through this process.
Your target market does not know that your company is even an option. If your prospective clients are easily identifiable, this third reason is an inexcusable problem. To parallel the situation, Microsoft would have had to not know that there are computers outside the state of Washington or Shuffle Master did not know that there are casinos in other cities than Las Vegas. Either you do not have a master marketing plan or you have one that is not working.
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