Marketing (The Brian Tracy Success Library)

There is another saying: “To achieve something you have never achieved before, you will have to do something you’ve never done before. You’ll have to develop skills you never had before. You will have to offer products and services that you never offered before. You will have to become a different person than you have ever been before

Those who do not plan for the future cannot have one.”

In their excellent book Competing for the Future, Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad

The natural tendency of many businesses is to blow their own horns, to brag about their market successes. They make loud public announcements about the areas where they are earning the highest profits. They wave the red flag in front of the bull and encourage their competitors to rush into those markets with their own products or services, even if the competitive quality is not as good. Eventually, their sales, profits, and market share decline. This is what happens when you encourage other competitors into your marketplace

Your customers will make you rich, if you ask them enough questions and listen to their answers.”

What exactly are the main goals and ambitions of your ideal prospect?

What is your competitive advantage today? What will your competitive advantage be in the future? What should your competitive advantage be if you want to stand out from your competitors? What could your competitive advantage be if you want to lead your industry in sales and profitability? And most important, what changes will you have to make immediately to develop and maintain a competitive advantage that enables you to achieve market supremacy?

Another question with regard to your customers who are currently using your competition’s products is: “Why should they switch?” Why should anybody switch from a supplier with whom they are satisfied to buy your product or service? You should be able to give the answer to this question in twenty-five words or less. If you cannot answer this question quickly and persuasively, it means that you probably don’t know what the answer is.

When you think about your customers all the time, your customers will then think about you. When you make your customers the central focus of your attention, you will discover faster, better, cheaper, and easier ways to satisfy them, and they will reward you by coming back over and over again

All successful marketing campaigns are based on good research and good market intelligence: knowing what your competitors are doing and what else is going on in the marketplace