Smbizsmartz

Many organizations attempt to differentiate themselves in their industry but often fail. Have you ever thought to yourself, I have a great product/service, but I can’t seem get the right kind of attention? Well consider the following 7 habits many business owners fall into and discover why your business isn’t the prettiest rock in the pond.

1.      You are copying marketing strategies from your competitor 2.      Your business doesn't convey value to a potential customer 3.      You have decided Social Media is "not" for you 4.      Your elevator pitch is generic and forgettable 5.      Your marketing material does not include corporate discriminators 6.      Your website is too generic and uninspiring 7.      You have no networking strategy

Why is it that many organizations have a difficult time setting themselves apart from their competition? Are your products/services easy to obtain? Is your market over saturated with vendors that look just like you? Are you not articulating your value to the customer? Are you talking to the wrong crowd?

It is essential that your organization understand factors that differentiate you from your competitors. Your organization should clearly be able to articulate what makes your company exceptional. Could your “it” factor be your unique product, celebrity status, capability, or expertise?

Once you have a clear understanding as to what differentiates you from your competitors and you are speaking to the “right” audience, do not forget to effectively communicate your “it” to your potential buyers. Create a value proposition that makes potential customer want to come to you. Try these three ways to discover your true value proposition:

1.       Know you customer- Offer a beneficial solution to your potential buyer problems

2.       Know your products and services – Potential buyers want to know how your organization will help them gain, save, or improve

3.       Know your competitors- Understand how their products, services or idea create value

As your organization explore new options for gaining new business, always remember to be concise and consistent when marketing your organization. Practice your message to perfection so you are always ready.

This month I challenge you to re-examine and refresh your corporate discriminators by the numbers. So many times our corporate discriminators are so common that they no longer function as discriminators. How many times have you seen “minority ownership” as a corporate discriminator? Being minority-owned is hardly a discriminator in the Washington DC area, as a matter of fact it’s hardly a discriminator elsewhere!

Using customer service as a discriminator is great if you are truly providing customer service that is above and beyond what your competitors provide. Take the time to look at any customer service metric in your industry and crunch the data to see if you’re truly beating that metric or are you just meeting a high industry standard. 

Look around and you’ll see examples of corporate discriminators that are really just companies “doing their job”. Make sure that your corporate discriminators are do more than just their job!!

Do you know what your customer or client is saying about you? When is the last time you “Googled” your organization? Why are these actions important?

Instead of jumping on the defensive about what your customers or clients are saying about you, take that information and convert it into intelligence for your business. Feedback can help you hone in on your organization’s flaws. You then have the opportunity to create a framework for feedback to stay ahead of your competitors. 

Here are a few ways you can exploit your weaknesses and make them strengths:

Creating a process within your organization to receive customer feedback

Use social media in your data collection process

After data validation, convert customer feedback into your organizations process 

Build best practices and lessons learned into your process to assess improvements

As part of your process make sure to notify your customer of your improvements through a feedback loop

Train your employees to look for client opportunities and feedback

Client intelligence is a term that’s too often bandied about....”Do we have enough intel?” “Let’s do a data call” or even “let’s mindmap”. Too often, we hide behind the term client intelligence as a means of avoiding direct (and potentially rejecting) interactions and conversations with our targets and clients. Intelligence is out there and it is useful…but it is also a bit creepy. I admire a vendor that takes the time find out the basics of my company and presents a reasonable and solid proposition. I don’t do business with the vendor that not only knows my business, but also knows that I garden, my birthday is in August, and that I don’t like oysters. There is no single bit of data or “client intelligence” that you’re ever going to receive that will suddenly unlock a client and have them fall into your books. Taking the time to speak with your clients in a focused manner in order to build (or even expand upon) a relationship will provide you with intelligence and understanding uniquely shaped to your relationship.

Is your organization having a hard time reaching successful operational excellence? Here are three key principles to reaching Operational Excellence:

1.      Have employees involved

Understand how important it is to value all employees- Ensure all employees involved in the workflow process uphold and increase the overall level of performance using established continuous tools for customer satisfaction to prevent abnormal flow. These tools are often put in place to make sure customer follow ups, relations, and guidelines are met. 

2.      Create processes to deal with irregularities 

Although ALL employees are trained to maintain successful operational processes, sometimes things fall through due to outliers, or irregularities. Therefore, it is key is to implement a course of action that employees can follow before calling a supervisor. Creating standard processes for outliers and irregularities ensures that organization continues operations even if the supervisors are not available.

3.      Make employees more accountable

It is vital that your organization has a clear understanding that Operational Excellence is about business growth. Laying out all employees’ roles and responsibilities will ensure that each person carries their weight within the organization. This will not only help with determining the weak links within the organization, but also allows management to stop running day-to-day operations of the organization and put their efforts to actually growing the business.

Operational excellence allows room for all businesses to constantly enhance in all areas of performance, whether it is in the area of decision-making, sales, productivity, and customer relations. Successful operational excellence processes and structures should drive better operational effectiveness and proficiency. Are you unsure of structure implementations your company can use to promote operational excellence? Below, are four essential structural pillars you can implement for building your business;

1.       Envision Vital Operational Methods. Identify key processes. While identifying your companies operational processes are sure to recognize those things that generate value, evolution, and improvement. Once you have a clear understanding of your company’s key operational processes construct a pictorial model that illustrates and identifies all the connectors both internal and external to your organization.  That includes your customers, merchants, and associates.

2.       Monitor Constant Progress. As your operations endure expansion,  adjust your business strategy, procedures, and processes to increase progressive  structural performance. Your operational processes should always be aligned with your business structure.

3.       Develop Metrics. Establish procedures for standard operating workflows and improved business systems that report all workflow dimensions. Implementing workflow reports ensure that you keep up with unusual ranges within business operational metrics. You are then able to evaluate and make changes if necessary.

4)     What is the role of different employees in establishing Operational Excellence?

A: Senior Management of the organization need to have a clear understanding of the economical, social, cultural, demographic, environmental, political, governmental, legal, technological and competitive factors that influence the success of the organization. Through this understanding, senior leadership will establish the strategic direction of the organization. Senior leaders must also communicate the strategic direction  to  all levels of the organization. It is very important that senior leader’s involve all levels of the organization in the strategy formulation process.

It is essential for Managers to establish goals and objectives  that are essential for  executing the strategic plan of the organization. This includes ensuring that policies; procedures, systems, rewards  and f staff are all focused on  Operational Excellence.

All members of the staff must be trained, motivated and committed to achieving the highest level of performance on a consistent basis if the organization is going to achieve sustained excellence.

5) How can a small business on a budget successfully use outside consultants and resources to positively promote and sustain Operational Excellence?

A: This depends largely on the competency’s that exist within the small business.  Leadership must understand what competencies it can and cannot afford to create within its organization as a result of budget constraints. If it is determined that some of the essential competencies are lacking the organization must bring in external resources to fill in the gaps.  In making this decision the organization must have a clear understanding of how these resources will help to overcome strategic imperatives and what is the desired return on investment.  The use of outside consultants should be viewed as an investment and not an expense.

nTuitive nGen would like to thank Walter Swindell of Optimization Solutions Consulting for contributing to this month's theme of Operational Excellence. Optimization Solutions Consulting is a provider of  helping organizations achieve improved results by identifying those things that are out of alignment with their strategic plan and therefore working against the success of the organization.  Optimization Solutions Consulting is on the cusp of improving small business operations.  Take a look..                   

1)      There are many definitions of Operational Excellence, ranging from the purely theoretical to the completely practical.  What is your definition of Operational Excellence and what school of thought is your definition based upon?

A: Operational Excellence is when all aspects of the organization are aligned and working towards the achievement of the vision and mission of the organization.  My Operational Excellence school of thought comes from the belief that if an organization does not create and communicate a vision that incorporates its core ideology and envisioned future, it is highly unlikely that the organization will achieve Operational Excellence.

2) What are some critical factors in reaching Operational Excellence?  Does this change for companies that are in manufacturing versus non-manufacturers. 

A: Key factors in achieving Operational Excellence are  having clear and establish goals, objectives, and standards for performance. To achieve Operational Excellence  it is  essential that each individual in the organization has a clear understanding of how Operational Excellence is defined for  their accountabilities. It is as equally important l that each functional area of the organization clearly understands the strategic objectives of the organization and the cross functional dependency of the organization. Operational Excellence will never be achieved if functional areas perform their duties and responsibilities in isolation.  These principles hold true for all organization  whether or not they are a  manufacturing  or non-manufacturers company.

3) How can a small business establish a baseline in order to implement measures that will increase Operational Excellence?

A: Step 1- Establish a clear understanding of the critical success factors that are essential to achieving organization goals.  An organization that does not establish performance metrics will never know if it is on a pathway to success. 

Step 2-Establish standards for measuring each critical success factor.Standards of performance must be established for each operational function that is linked to the critical success factors. Achieving Operational Excellence will not occur unless it is managed