SBDC offers workshop on creating a business-unique strategic advantage

The Northern Marianas College Small Business Development Center will continue its Customer Loyalty Workshop Series tomorrow, Sept. 13, at 6pm at the SBDC conference room. The topic this week is Developing Your Organization’s Unique Strategic Advantage (USA) and Communicating it to Your Customers.

In today’s business climate, it is essential to find a way to gain an advantage over your competition. According to workshop instructor, Rik Villegas, “The difference between thriving and surviving will be realized by those businesses that effectively differentiate themselves. Unless you have no competition or have more customers than you can handle, then you absolutely need a USA. Simply stated, it is the distinct benefit your organization offers to a specific group, and how the benefit sets you apart and gives you an advantage over the competition.”

Business guru, Tom Peters, states in his book Thriving On Chaos: “Being unique—standing out from the growing crowd of competitors, products, and services—is essential for survival. Such uniqueness, to be implemented, must be understood and lived by everyone in the organization…an ‘in between’ or ‘stuck in the middle’ strategy is unfailingly disastrous.”

This SBDC workshop will help you to recognize what makes your organization, product(s), or service(s) unique. You should be able to state your “uniqueness” in 25 words or less. Villegas asks, “ If you don’t know your uniqueness, how can you expect your employees to share it with customers, and how will your customers or prospects know your USA when they shop with you and tell others about the benefits you offer?”

The workshop will also offer many ideas to get your businesses to stand out from the crowded competition lineup, and position your business to a specific target market where you can deliver better products or services than your competitors.

Some examples of how businesses have created a unique niche and created greater customer loyalty include a Young Americans Bank in Denver, which caters exclusively to children. In the first seven months of operations, the bank opened more than 5,000 customer accounts.

In San Diego, a small laundromat owner decided to install exercise equipment to attract the health-conscious crowd. In the health care service sector, hospitals and other facilities are becoming more innovative at carving out specific niches in the marketplace. Instead of trying to reach every potential health care patient, they are focusing on specialty care to increase their market share.

When St. Elizabeth in Dayton, Ohio began advertising its sports medicine center, it experienced a growth of 100 percent in the first quarter, as compared with the same quarter the previous year.

If you are in business or manage an organization, that start budgeting some of your time, starting today, to identify your USA. Ask your customers, suppliers, and employees what they feel makes your business different and better than the competition. If they have difficulty telling you, or their answers are not convincing, then take that as a sign you must make the time to work on your USA—it will be one of the wisest investments you’ll make into your business.

Contact the NMC Small Business Development Center at 235-1551 to reserve your seat for this valuable workshop titled “Customer Loyalty—Developing a Unique Strategic Advantage and Communicating it to your Customers”. The cost of the workshop is only $10 and seating is limited. (PR)