How to Keep Your Company From Becoming a Commodity

Businesses everywhere are slashing prices, offering incentives and promoting rewards programs to generate sales to achieve their business goals. Not only do these lower sales result in lower profit margins, but if you’re not careful, it can end up doing more damage than good for your company. How can a business owner differentiate themselves from their competition in order to avoid becoming a commodity? TAB business coach, Joe Zente in Austin has several prevention tips to aid in business improvement and help keep your products and services ahead of the curve.

From the ZThree blog:

1. Develop a Proactive De-Commodization Strategy: If you think your product or service is so unique that you are immune, you may want to think again. Over one million people have viewed the Did You Know 3.0 video. If you haven’t seen it, please take 5 minutes to check it out on YouTube. Those who have watched it are struck not only by the speed at which the world is changing, but also the rate with which this speed of change is increasing. In your business planning, make sure to incorporate the fact that commodization happens 10 to 1000 times quicker in the Information Age than in previous generations.

• Develop an Innovation Mentality: This is not an easy feat. It requires an unconditional commitment from the owner and from the entire leadership team. Changing the way people think can be tough, but the rewards of developing an Innovation Mentality will be well worth the effort in the face of changing marketplace that all businesses face today.
• Develop a World Class Sales Organization: Your competitors are the biggest readers of your website and marketing material. If a product or service is valuable and there is a decent sized market for it, someone, somewhere will soon be trying to duplicate it. An effective, differentiated, scalable Sales Culture is something that cannot be duplicated.

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