Utilizing Your Competitive Edge to Create Success

Identifying and developing your competitive edge is the cornerstone of success in life. This means finding those skills, aptitudes, abilities and aspects of your nature that set you apart or in which you have a natural proficiency. You need to go through a diagnostic process, assessing your ability in at least six business related areas: strategy, execution, innovation, deal making, organization and integrating culture.

There are different aptitudes in which a person can have great specific ability, but which are not measurable by current tests. Your competitive edge is one of them. You should be nurturing and utilizing this ability. You may know where your greatest aptitudes lie, but you may also be surprised to find what others consider to be your greatest aptitudes.

One businesswoman listed her two greatest aptitudes as the ability to listen to others and her verbal skills. When her three key executives and one supplier were asked the same question, they (in different words) identified other skills and did not list the aptitudes she had described. They emphasized her ability to think out of the box. She saw solutions to problems no one else had seen. She came up with opportunities that others had not noticed. As the supplier remarked, “she has a never-ending number of ideas that challenge you to think through things.”

Small and medium-sized businesses must offer better service than business giants, and often the president of the company is personally involved in making sure the service is satisfactory. It is not possible for the president of a multibillion-dollar company to take the time to respond to similar customer complaints.

When you do what you are good at, you enjoy doing it. It is frustrating to do something that you are not good at doing or are no better at than many others. For better results, you should surround yourself with others who have their own competitive edges that are different from yours and the others in your team.

Not focusing on your competitive edge eventually leads to burnout. One of the most common factors that holds business owners back from achieving success is burnout. A business owner I worked with had taken over a company from her dad and got burned out. She didn’t want to do what she needed to do to run the business. In order to fight this feeling, we focused on her competitive edge. Burnout can make you mentally exhausted. It is a negative energy pattern. We had her keep track of all the activities she did that she didn’t like. Doing what she didn’t like took up 80 percent of her time. When we got rid of those things over time, the burnout disappeared.

Consider all the things that may set you or your business apart from your competition or potential competition. Look at all the factors involved in your life as a business owner and in the life of the business itself. For instance, one business owner found a competitive edge in being aware of the needs of his Spanish-speaking employees. He operated a cleaning company, and the major problem facing this business in his area was keeping employees. He operated in an area in Texas where there were many Mexican immigrants. By having the company benefits translated into Spanish, he could better communicate the total value of his employment and reduced his turnover rate.

If you only follow through with the commitment to find your competitive edge, and implement no other strategic plan, your life will be changed for the better.