Episode 6 – Standing Out from Your Competition in Your Local Small Business
Welcome back to the Local Small Business Coach Podcast, I am your coach Tammy Adams.
This is episode 6 and today we are going to discuss how to stand out from your competitors.
But before we dive in, I want to take a moment to discuss something that I saw on the Profit last night that really stood out based off our last couple of episodes.
If you aren’t watching the Profit, you need to. This is probably one of the best TV shows every local small business owner needs to watch. Marcus Lemonis, the amazing businessman behind the show, invests in local business to help not only turn them around, but to develop a brand that he can take national.
His main mantra is something I’ve always been preaching, just using different words and that is People, Process and Product. He gives mini business lessons to the audience and as a small business owner, you can learn so much.
The main reason I bring this up is, in last night’s episode Marcus asked the small business owner, who had 5 soup shops by the way, what his gross margin was. This owner looked right at him and had no idea.
This really stood out to me since we just got through talking about this last week how you need to know your gross margin. Here is Marcus and one of his key questions was this very thing and then he goes on to share how if this man gets his gross margins up he would add over a million in sales and $300,000 in profit from this one thing.
It really drove home how important this is.
So if you aren’t watching, please go back and watch all the episodes. Maybe we will dive in more in a future episode.
But let’s dive into today’s topic – Standing out from your competitors.
I picked this topic to follow our last episode’s discussion on our Ego getting in the way on purpose. Our Ego really goes crazy when it comes to our competitors. Often times we beat our chest that we are so much better than they are, that we miss what they are doing well.
I actually have a great learning lesson I had on this back in my Depot days. Since I had been with them from the 64th store, we were a very fired up group. We were growing so fast and kicking butt and our ego was huge. We dominated our competition and the love affair American had with us was pretty amazing.
As we expanded into the Western states, which is what I was a part of, we just took over a state at a time. We had no problem being obnoxious and cocky. Then a strange thing happened, we went into Washington up against a pretty popular big box retailer similar to us. No matter what we did, these guys kept getting strong and going head to head with us.
It kind of through us for a loop since we felt we were so much better than they were. But the customer was telling us something different.
Long story short, when we finally stopped beating our own chests and started to listen to the customer and how they were voting with their dollar we learned a valuable lesson. It led to use making a huge change that impacted a large chunk of our business.
Those of you that shopped us 15 years ago saw us transition from a huge contractor focus to one that was both a contractor business and a home décor business.
This was huge for us and a great move.
It all came from us just listening to what the customers were telling us we needed to do to grow our business and meet the needs they were looking for.
I tell you this story as it is just as important to each local small business owner as it was to this big box retailer.
For each of you, there are others in your community that are also doing either a similar business as you are or they are offering maybe 1 or 2 similar services. Your goal is to find out what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong. What are the opportunities that you can be taking advantage of?
How can you stand out from your competitors?
For the full show notes click the link below!
HELPFUL LINKS
Podcast Website: LocalSmallBusinessCoach.com
Leave your Message on the website with the SpeakPipe Button or just email me atTammy@LocalSmallBusinessCoach.com
Episode Show Notes: Episode 6 - Local Small Business Coach Podcast
Our Training Materials for Local Small Business Owners: TrainingforLocalSmallBusinessOwners.com
Starting a Local Small Business Website: StartALocalSmallBusiness.com
