When as a leader, your dialogue and meetings celebrate all that
is adverse and not working right now, you diminish the morale of the team and
contract the possibility of great performance by your team.
A good leader shouldn't recount, recite and rehearse economic
problems, economic setbacks, adverse policies and general limitations to their
business. The worth of a good leader is best put to the test in seasons such as
this. What makes anyone a good leader is beyond academic qualifications,
titles, hard work and even experience. Your worth as a leader is in having
correct answers and solutions superior to those of your subordinates and in
fact your competitors at this time.
Entrepreneurship and business is a tough game, it's not about
self-esteem, gains and profits alone; it's a contest and battle for market
territories and shares. It's a battle for the mind, the patronage, the pocket
and loyalty of the customer. It's about being superior to competitors at your
game. It's about superior thinking, superior methods, superior speed and
impressive delivery in the market place. It's about being better and always
being a step ahead of your competitors.
Customers would always be there for every kind of product, if
customers cease to exist for a product, the product would naturally cease to
exist. Customers keep products alive and well. Hence, the thinking of not
having customers is delusional, the thinking should be about winning choices,
strategies and methods that would attract all potential customers to your away
from competitors and competing brands. It's about creating vivid and compelling
superiority in value proposition, affordability and super service delivery than
competition.
It's about building superior relationships, intelligent
communication powered by winning insights through efficiently mined consumer
data – the outcome of a thorough market and consumer research.
Truth be told, your fear as an entrepreneur or business leader
is not sourced from the various economic developments and new economic
policies, it's actually inspired by your ignorance of what to do in response.
You probably don't have excellent answers to market and marketing questions.
Your lack of real solution and limited options are your fear factors. Not
really the economic climate which is of course, everybody's challenge.
Sincerely I can understand why you're anxious and sceptical,
especially when we come face to face with the following real business
questions:
- How do you keep your customers, keep
attracting new customers and attaining growth when product quality and
prices between your brand and competing brands are moving closer together?
In Nigeria today, there is no much difference between brands.
Insurance, pensions, telecoms, banking, beverages, housing, entertainment,
confectionary, travel and tourism, everybody appears to be offering the same
kind of product, only differentiated by brand name, colours and presentation
style. The core offering and benefit of all the products are extremely close if
not the same. For example all the bank officials that approach me for business
offer me the same thing; same products, same proposition; similar gains only
different by what they call it.
- Traditional basis for differentiation
such as product quality and cost are becoming less tangible. Most
competing brands today are differentiated on weaker platforms like
packaging, advertising and branding look and feel. The most critical
concerns to customers, which is quality of product and price is almost the
same amongst competing brands.
- Thirdly it probably appears
difficult for you to achieve strategic, profitable and competitive
positioning because of your company's essential capabilities. What your
company is primarily good at has become common place; your rivals are
equally as good at such today. And possibly, the feedback from market
research on what the consumer is asking for now is not a need your
company's capability and value creation model can easily align with. You
lack flexible operating processes and capabilities. This situation may
therefore be frustrating your current growth plans and customer conversion
ambition.
- Fourthly, and most challenging of
all is how to guarantee the buy in of your team and employees into new
concepts, new behaviours, new processes and outlook required for survival
and good growth at this critical time. Are your employees really bothered
about the business or their typical thinking is, if the business goes down
they move on to another employment?
How do you get your highly sentimental, self-serving, political
and indifferent team members to understand and apply an improved value and
benefits to customers today?
Dear entrepreneur, dear business leaders, I presume these are
mainly the things you fear. It's really not the environment, new policies, the
value of the naira, and socioeconomic re-engineering. Your fear is essentially
your ability, your business design and your team.
When diagnoses becomes correct, then right treatment can of
course commence. Dear friend, this is not the time to keep talking and talking
and lamenting and complaining about the cost and demands of our drive towards
progressive change as a nation. When as a nation we've decided to move from a
destructive comfort zone to a more progressive and rewarding and dignified
position, your thinking should be more on how you as a person and as a business
can ingest the change medicine and secure healing and good health in congruence
with other parts of the body of the nation.
Your real fears and anxiety is not the environment, it's
actually about how you would cope. Dear friend, this is the time to become
radical with your ideas, thinking and decisions. This is the time to engage
your mind, open your inner vision, connect with other intellects; obtain ideas
and embrace winning choices.
This is the season to explore fresh opportunities for good and
healthy growth. This may be the time for strategic partnerships, cost
efficiency considerations and trendier approach to service delivery.
Come on brace up, you can do it, you're a super leader, you can
handle it, it's all in you, don't be discouraged, be inspired, winning is fun,
success is pleasurable. This is your chance, create the value your customers
truly want and dominate your market. Others like you have done it before, you
can definitely make it happen. Best of luck.
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