Three Ways to Jump Start Your Business Cash Flow Machine Today

Three Ways to Jump Start Your Business Cash Flow Machine Today

Stopping New Competitors by Creating Barriers to Entry

Competition is always on the horizon. Barriers are the reasons why anybody cannot start any business at any time. To compete in some industries, you must master out of the ordinary technologies or make large capital investments before you can become a player. Doing what your rivals can’t is a pretty good operational definition of “competitive advantage.”

What are your competitive advantages and is it strong enough to either prevent rivals from competing directly with you or entering your market? Creating barriers are not as hard as people make it out to be and I have outline two examples below.

For example, let take automotive manufactures. Hyundai was the little car company that had horrible quality and undependable reliability. By the mid-1990’s Hyundai has worked on it problems, but it had to convince the general public that their previous reputation is no longer valid. So, they decided to offer a warranty that has never been seen-a 100,000 mile warranty. Remember, this was still when the big three automakers were still offering 36,000 warranty. That proved to be a huge competitive advantage that catapulted them to become a major player in the automotive market. As you can see a pre-emptive strategy can be a barrier.

Another example is one close to my heart. I have a group of clients who are financial advisors. I thought them how to create a service that’s FREE to their clients, but had a high perceived value to their clients. I set up these financial advisors with complementary services providers like attorney’s who did estate planning, CPA accountants, etc. I convinced these providers to do a free seminar on estate planning for my clients, clients. My clients, clients loved it; they told there friends and my clients made a fortune.

I bet you can guess what happened next. You got it! Competitors copied this strategy. But, they forget the three critical factors such as: One, I did all the scouting and sell to the providers. In addition I did all the marketing to my clients customers to get them to attend to the seminar. Two, I convinced the providers to perform at the seminar free of charge. And three, their competitors’ intent of the seminar was different. Therefore, when competitors try to copy this competitive advantage/barrier they instantly fail and pull out. Why do they fail? They fail because first, they spend an enormous amount of money and labor to find a person who would perform a seminar for you. Second, they pay the provider some huge speaking fee. And third, they want to make money for the seminar. Why? Because they invested probably $2,500 to $5,000 for this seminar and they want to recoup their investment, plus a little profit. Therefore, their competitors’ intent is different, because my client doesn’t have to make a dime from the seminar, because it didn’t cost them anything. So the investment and risk prevented competitors from competing head to head with my clients. This was and still is a killer barrier to entry for my client competitors.

Now I gave you two examples of barriers to entry. Tell me what you think and how what entry to barriers you have placed in your business.

Bobby Ellis
Xspology.com

How to Compete in a Commoditized Industry

What is a commodity? According to the Webster Dictionary the word commodity is defined as a a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price.

In a commodity market, many companies compete and none enjoys a competitive advantage. Meaning, that each firm has equal access to such necessities as technologies, capital, clients, and labor. For example, a financial service firm that sell stock. Let’s face, all stock is the same. If I buy Microsoft (MSFT) stock from E*Trade, it that same MSFT stock that Merrill Lynch sell. Therefore, the product is the same. With that being said, how to a financial firm differentiate themselves from other financial firms? Currently these firms separate themselves by selling advice, research and create mutual funds that exclusive their firm.

If you cannot maneuver your competition, because they are consistently imitating your every move, then you must either improve your efficiency by doing the job fast and/or cheaper than your competitors. You start by analyzing the relative strengths of your competitive environment:

Current Customers – Are you getting the most out of every customer? Can you earn a higher profit margin by offer your clients’ upgrades to their current products/services they purchase from you? Can you give your clients more value by offering incentives such as discounts? Can you motivate your customers’ offers your services? Of, course these are only suggestions and each individual business circumstances will be different.

Potential buyers- there are a number of people that need your service and don’t know it. Sometime you’ll provide a service that almost meets a whole new market requirement if you just tweaked it a little. Look at it this way. Either you can expand your market/number of buyer with new products or you increase your presence in your current market. Here’s how you determine which alternative is the best for you. Whatever you think will earn you the largest, most sustaining income in the least risky manner, that what you should do.

Current competitors- your current competitors are only a small piece of the competitive landscape, because the new entrants are going to continue to enter your market; rather you know them or like them, it doesn’t matter. You need to be cautious when developing a strategy to create a competitive advantage against new competitors, because it could back-fire. Trying to destroy or marginalize the competition is dangerous-particularly if you’re competing over price. Companies that enjoy competitive advantages but that are not content with what they have can harm themselves permanently by pursuing aggressive rather than cooperative tactics. You can rarely put a well-run company out of business through price competition. Instead of competing on price, you increase output and production capacity.

Potential competitors entering your market – as Microsoft Chairman as always said, a small startup in a garage can grow up and become one of your biggest competitors. Just look at Google-a company that’s only eight years old. The common and most proven strategy uses to combat such entrants is: increase the barriers to markets. It is a fact that when new entrants enter your market you market share deceases. In addition, with new entrants you must move carefully, because you are in a position where you have a lot to lose if you already own the market. The entrant has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Vendor relations- All your suppliers should be a part of your management or advisory team. They need to be involved in the development of new strategies and products for you. If you can get your vendors to help you operate more efficiently, you can pass the savings to your customers. In addition, you want to try to tie your vendors up in first right of refusal contracts, because you at last thing you want is your competitors from receiving the same benefit form sometime you help create.

Substitutes/Complementary services – A huge opportunity that normally lost in small businesses is the opportunity to partners with others to introduce substitute and complementary products. Why? Fear! In the Book, “Building Trust at the Speed of Change,” author Edward Marshall said, fear doesn’t increase productivity, speed, creativity, profitability. And he is right. So deal accordingly.

The six competitive categories above are six simples way to work on your business from the inside. It is highly suggested that you outline a detailed plan that address each category and how you can improve it. Good luck and I will see you up at the top.

Bobby Ellis
Xspology.com

Rules for Building Superior Relationships

Finally, businesses are starting to understand that people and their relationships are critical to their success. In a relationship-based business, the agreement between two or more parties assumes trade-offs between cost, risk, skills, labor, and rewards. This agreement should outline how the involved parties will treat each other. The agreement must address the character, quality, and integrity of the relationship.

The agreement isn’t just a set of expectations that the parties negotiate. It’s a set of rights and obligations that people have in the relationship. In a relationship-based corporation, the character and quality of their relationships ensure the success of the business, and speed is an outgrowth of those trust-based relationships.

People take care of what they own. To value the relationship, people must see the benefit. If they “own” the relationship, they will implement what is necessary well. This is a journey requiring character, will and discipline. Look at it this way. Someone have to be responsible for the implementation of the relationship management, acceptance, and enforcement. We must define it mutually and manage it for efficiency. It matures from learning. It is not static.

If a corporation remove the barriers of their old transactional-based system and culture it could leverage their relationships to produce more output faster. It’s essential that everyone involved is on board and know exactly what is going on, so when it’s time to perform, the response is instant. An instant response depends upon shared commitment, a set of common rules about how the relationship will work. A company can not afford to be misaligned or ill prepared.

One last comment:
Traditionally, relationships have not been a win-win. There always seems that theirs a party that tries to take advantage of relationships, focusing only how much they suck out to the relationship and how fast.

Instead, you need help your relationship by enabling them to become more profitable, with incentive that adds to your strategic objective. You do this by creating a community for your relationships to grow. The community must be place where both parties can safely and freely express ideas, complaints, and ways to improve the relationship without backlash.

Bobby Ellis
Xspology.com

How to Get Free Public Relations that Drives Sales

Getting free press is easy once you know what you are doing. To this day, I have not paid for any press or media attention, but have been covered in over 300 publications. I’m not saying that to brag, but to inform you that you can grow your business without investing a dime in advertisement. First you need to create a checklist. Maybe something like this:
Do I have a website for them to visit?
If not, you need to get one fast. Microsoft is currently giving away free websites hosting and domains names for one year. Just go to liveoffice.microsoft.com.

Find the sites that accept free press releases and articles. Hear are some of my favorites:
Soft411
Free News Releases
PR Web
Free Press Releases
24-7 Press Release
Press World PR Leap
iNewswire
PR Zoom
ePress Releases

If you need to create a press release. You can find some good templates at:
PR Newswire
Xspolgy.com
PRW

How to incorporate your press releases into your marketing.
You can say something like: I have been published over 2000 times. If you don’t believe me, just go to Google, MSN, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. and type in (the name of your company).
Your press release should link back to your site. Your site should give away something of value in exchange for their name and email address. Collecting the names of people who visit your site will become your greatest asset. See “How to Generate Income From you Biggest Asset-Your Mailing List.”

In addition, your website should have publish all your releases. You press releases don’t necessary have to be public, but in your site. Also, make sure your pages can provide RSS. This allows the search engines ping your site or have it metacrawled and to give your site higher ranking in the search engine.

Why you have to must submit press releases. One of secret to optimizing your website in the search engines is getting links to your websites. This is how the search engine decides the important and relevant of your site.

Last but not least, tracking. Tracking your press releases is extremely important. You are going to want to track which media outlets are picking up your releases. Here’s another closely guarded secret. Professional marketers place coding into their website. These codes tell you where visitors are coming from, what time, what media outlets are bring visitors to you.

Bobby Ellis
Xspology.com

What are you waiting for, to grow your business?

Dear Business Owner,

Guess what you competitors are up right now trying to configure a strategy to put you out of business. They are partnering with other companies behind your back, they are luring your customers in with better pricing and better services and they doing it faster than you can react to it. So what are you going to do about it?
Do you have a rock solid, systematic plan to combat these attacks successfully? If you don’t only want to survive, but to thrive in this progressively more competitive environment you must significantly improve your marketing and business strategy, optimize your processes, market more efficiently, systemize your business and last but not least, improve all relationships. It’s that simple. If you are going to spend all your time and energy into building a successful practice, then you owe it to yourself, your family, and your company to provide the highest income, security, and stability possible.

Bobby Ellis
Xspology.com

How I Did It

I’ve had a couple of dozen people call me in the last couple of months and asking me how did I grow so fast. I told them, that I really did not grow that fast. It took me two years of hard work to put a sound plan together. And for two years, I create sales letters, sales scripts, 6 coaching programs, and authored a book. After I completed all of that, I released it all to the public at once. And the rest as they say is history. I submitted my website to google, msn, yahoo and any media outlet who would except submissions. Including press releases and articles, because to this day I still submit two article to those outlets that supported http://xspology.com in the beginning. Looking back on it, my greatest success would have to be the partnership deals I created. From these deals I have gained great friends.

Bobby Ellis