The Sales Archaeologist

Whenever I travel I make it a point to make my way through a good book. This week I am in Kuala Lumpur and as you can imagine the long flight to Malaysia, the layovers and delays mean that now I will probably be reading more than a few. I picked up a great book for this journey - Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne and I highly recomend it.

The book emphasizes that too often companies fight for the same business, with the same competitors year after year and this results in depleted margins, commodotization of their products or services and a lack of innovation. Great companies look for spaces where they can compete "alone". They do this by redefining what is needed and what they offer, they change the game and create markets, needs, opportunity and business. Think Apple, Yellow Tail Wine and Cirque De Soleil.

I couldn't help thinking how appropriate this advice is for some of the VARs that I have been working with lately. They can either choose to compete in a saturated space or they can choose not to. They can redefine their market, their customers and their strategy and start setting the rules instead of plodding along in the paradigm of competition created by their - and here is the ironic part - their competitors.

Dave Kurlan talks about eliminating objections by refusing to believe in them or at least seeing them from a totally different perspective. What if the same is true of competitors. What if they only exist because we play by their rules and allow ourselves to fish in the same muddy pond - instead of the Blue Ocean.

History is full of examples of those that found new space and changed the dialogue forever - Newton, Columbus, Picasso, Lincoln, Elizabeth 1st etc etc...... What about your business Strategy? Is it Unique? Does it separate you? Is it Crystal clear to everyone in the organization? That is covered in the book as well and the subject of the next post.