Three Ways Little Companies Outsmart Large Corporations

If there is one thing you can count on, it’s change. It’s become the standard, not the exception, on both a professional and personal basis. Getting comfortable with your business? Look out and get set, it’s sure to change now that you have everything figured out!

The driving force behind our current environment is that the market’s Internet Speed is hundreds of times faster than just 20 years ago—letting innovation and marketing speed everything up.

There are three stages of any strategic development and you probably know them well:

1. The Beginning
2. The Transition
3. The Completion

What’s different today is the space between these stages has decreased from years to months. For instance, many software companies now plan software updates every three months, a 10-fold speedup of just five years ago. This means there is a need for you to plan your current strategy, as well as your next that you’re going to introduce.

If you’re a smaller company—or even a little one—here are three simple suggestions that can effectively guide your strategic planning and move your company ahead successfully:

1. Move Faster—Rapid prototyping is a must skill for today’s strategists and can be successfully employed with any company of any size. Doing so will allow you to leverage your nimbleness and beat your larger competitors to the market.
2. Be a Specialist—Having one serious expertise with deep resources can successfully beat even the largest behemoth corporations who are unable to change on a dime.
3. Charge Less—Costs to customers need to appeal to their wallets. It’s guaranteed that the largest will be the most expensive. You don't need to follow that if your operations are carefully controlled.

Some companies try and cope with the market by waiting until everything is perfectly clear-sighted. The problem with this approach is by the time this has occurred large and small companies have already taken their strategic positions which leaves little room for you. If you feel you’ve reached this point it is probably time for you to consider a change in how you develop your strategies, and how quickly.

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Tom Marin, Managing Partner of MarketCues, wants to hear from you! Follow MarketCues on Twitter for branding and social media tips, as well as the latest trends. Tom also welcomes e-mails, new LinkedIn connections, calls to (407) 330-7708 or visit www.marketcues.com. How can he help solve your branding issues?

Note: If you are a printing company or product/services company serving the print-media market, and would like to be considered for a feature in this blog, please contact Tom Marin for an interview.