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Too much of American business is focused on
cost management, the Achilles heel of American industry. What most
businesspeople have failed to realize, however, is that almost any
company has the potential to geometrically increase its revenue
stream and profitability. Moreover, studies of how “Alpha
companies” come to dominate a product category or industry prove
that you don’t have to be the dominant company in your category to
benefit from the Alpha model. Almost any company of any size can
create dramatic, sustainable growth — usually in a year or less —
by following the same strategies and rules that Alpha companies
employ.
Here are six rules that CEOs, senior-level executives, executives
at second- and third-tier companies, and owners of smaller
businesses can apply to become — or at least act like — an Alpha
company and navigate past the cost-management trap to revenue-side
management.
Rule #1: Functionally satisfy at least the minimum;
emotionally satisfy the maximum. If functional-needs
satisfaction were the true differentiator of top brands and
survival brands, Coke would not be an Alpha — Pepsi clearly proved
that it was preferred in blind taste tests. To work toward becoming
an Alpha, you must meet at least minimum functional needs
and provide higher levels of satisfaction and significance
than your competitors. You must make customers feel smart,
appreciated, more attractive, more respected, and/or more
fulfilled.
Rule #2: Don’t compete on price. Alpha companies
don’t gain or maintain their Alpha status based on price alone. In
fact, they compete less on price than their competitors do. Don’t
get confused about the importance of price. Price is the
final value judgment customers make — it is the conclusion
they create based on weighing all of the benefits a
product or brand seems to offer.
Rule #3: Drive expectations. You must
differentiate your brand not by what it does, but by what it makes
customers want. If your company can satisfy those things
better than anyone else and at a higher level of emotional-needs
satisfaction, it can then generate controlling influence with
customers and competitors. The company that can drive expectations
— among customers, distributors, and/or referral agents — to the
highest level has the greatest immediate influence in the
marketplace.
Rule #4: Measure causes over outcomes.
Measuring and comparing sales, profits, market share, brand
awareness, stock prices, margins, or any of the other outcomes that
businesses spend so much time worrying over only clouds the focus
on the causes that drive those desired outcomes. It is far more
productive to understand your company’s performance in terms of
causal factors, such as perceived satisfaction of needs (especially
self-satisfaction and personal significance), than in terms of
final outcomes. The list is long, but other key causal factors
driving revenue generation include communications effectiveness,
brand differentiation, and loyalty generation.
Rule #5: Critical change occurs once competitors start to
follow your lead. This process of leading the pack starts
with driving new and higher customer expectations. Once competitors
discover that your customers are influencing customers of
other products to buy your product because you have set
new, higher expectations, those competitors start to follow your
lead. When this happens, you have established a level of influence
momentum that can be sustained for as long as you protect the
''Alpha assets'' that got you there, such as product performance,
availability, company personality, customer support, and so
on.
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Ball
authored The Alpha Factor: The Secret to Dominating Competitors
and Creating Self-Sustaining Success.
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Rule #6: Deep, sustainable strength takes time.
Like almost everything else in life, developing deep sustainable
strength takes time. Although a company can become an Alpha in a
short period of time, to sustain that leadership status takes much
longer. Customers, competitors, distributors, referral agents, and
even employees need to become accustomed to seeing you in the
leadership role and following your lead. Your corporate management
also needs to get your company’s culture accustomed to that new
lead position. Companies that dominate their categories make it a
priority to maintain and protect their Alpha assets
relentlessly.
About the Author
Wes Ball is founder of The Ball Group, a strategic innovation
management consulting firm, and author of The Alpha Factor: The
Secret to Dominating Competitors and Creating Self-Sustaining
Success (Westlyn Publishing, www.thealphafactor.com).
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