January 21, 2016/in Entrepreneurial Life, Marketing, Selling /
Some very big US firms, Fortune 500 companies, spend lots of money testing new ideas to bring to market. Nine out of every 10 products that survive this process still fail.
If they can’t get “new” right, then why should we small players focus on finding something “unique”, which means the only one of its kind; unequaled, unparalleled or unmatched. New with knobs on, in other words.
It’s tough enough just starting out as a one-man plumber. “Unique”, in this context, means you arrive at the appointment you made to check my blocked toilet. On the right day, even if 240 minutes late.
Every entrepreneurial contest I have seen run by schools rewards “unique” ideas. I think this is because teachers (employees mostly) have as much idea about small business as my dog has about the Greek financial crisis.
Almost every great idea is more of an improvement on what already exists, by someone frustrated by how bad the then-current solution was. (Skype, Amazon, Google, eBay, Paypal, Airbnb, Uber,…). And then, as the funds started to flow in, they improved beyond recognition.
We even have a concept known as a “unique selling proposition”. But with dozens of millions of businesses worldwide you can spend your whole life trying to find some unique angle.
It’s a distraction we do not need at startup time.
You don’t have to be the best. You don’t have to be one-of-a-kind, unparalleled, unequaled, or unmatched. On the day that you meet a prospect looking for something that you sell you just need to be a tad better than the other contenders.
“Better” could mean a bunch of things:
Cheaper;
Better looking;
Friendlier;
More polite;
Offering better terms;
Offering faster delivery;
Your father knows his mother;
You were at school together;
Being the only person who arrived at the appointment on time.
You will notice that I haven’t used the word “best”. The word has no context. “Best” in which of the hundreds of facets that measure our efforts?
Enron, for instance was Fortune Magazine’s choice of America’s Most Innovative Company for six years. As it turns out their products were indeed quite innovative in that they did not actually exist.
Og Mandino had it right when he said: “The greatest secret in the world is that you only have to be a small, measurable amount better than mediocrity… and you’ve got it made.”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not subscribing to mediocrity. I am unsubscribing from this nonsense about my tiny business trying to be better than Sainsbury’s. I can’t compete in their sphere. They can’t compete in my sphere. “Best” has nothing to do with it.
Each time you fall foul of awful service it is the universe nudging you to start your own firm and be just a little better than mediocrity.