Think 2 Steps Ahead of the Competition: Winning Strategies for Business Success

When I started my Salesforce consultancy firm in 2018, I faced fierce competition from established players. I learned I had to think innovatively to leave behind the competition.

I have tried different strategies and found out how to put them into practice and what outcomes they can achieve. In this blog, I’ll tell you the winning business strategies that made me stand out from my rivals, how they benefited me, and how you can adopt them as well.

So, let’s get started.

Get to Know Your Market, Competitors, and Anticipate Opportunities for Growth

I believe fierce competition isn’t a reason to be afraid. It says that you have entered the market with huge opportunities. All you have to do is assess customer needs, demand trends, market gaps, barriers to entry, etc.

The best practice to do so is conducting market research. Analyze your competitors, their strengths, and weaknesses. So you can gain a comprehensive understanding of market trends, customer needs, and competitors’ marketing strategies.

You may assume that this is a standard procedure that every business follows. But how can you leverage it to beat your competitors?

Let’s come to the success story of Zoom, a video conferencing platform that started in 2011.

Zoom stepped into a market that was predominated by giants like Skype. At that time Skype had a limit of 100 participants in a meeting that was limiting large companies’ ability to conduct virtual meetings with their entire workforce. Zoom realized this need and allowed 1,000 participants in the meeting.

Zoom also introduced a webinar feature that enables the hosting of online events with up to 10,000 attendees.

This example teaches us how market research can help you identify market gaps to secure growth despite the competition.

But that’s not the end of Zoom’s journey of outperforming Skype and its other competitors like Webex, GoToMeeting – and many others.

Zoom anticipated the need for remote work and online education during the period of Covid-19. It introduced features like virtual receptionist breakout rooms, etc to meet the needs. This strategic anticipation of market need helped Zoom to add more than 37,800 new business customers in 2020, more than the 2018, and 2019 combined (Source: Backlinko). Zoom’s revenue also increased by more than 300% in 2020, reaching a valuation of $2.65 billion.

This example shows the value of anticipating the customer’s needs and how to turn them into the opportunity to grow.

Being Customer-Centric

As Salesforce’s best ambassador, I was deeply inspired by its customer-centric philosophy. I aimed to show my passion for delivering value to customers by making my business more human and caring.

To become customer-centric, you need to listen to your customers. What do they want? What are their challenges? This understanding comes from sources such as surveys, interviews, and social media.

Adopting customer-centricity is essential, but how can businesses adapt to it? I’m happy to share my approach to making Cyntexa a customer-centric Salesforce consulting partner. Here’s how we do it…

• I have adopted a strategy called the 15% rule. This strategy encourages the employees to spend 15% of their time pursuing their ideas, passion, learning about innovations, and collaborating with others across the organization. This helped us to build a culture of creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking which resulted in customer-oriented solutions.
• Open innovation is another strategy that proved to be a very effective way for Cyntexa to improve customer centricity. This strategy helped Cyntexa to take advantage of external knowledge, expertise, and feedback, as well as internal capabilities to solve customer challenges and fulfill customer needs. Also, Cyntexa invested a fixed percentage of its revenue in R&D every year to meet evolving customer needs.
• A great source of inspiration for me is customer feedback. I often involve myself in surveys, interviews, and ethnographic studies to gain a comprehensive understanding of customer challenges, needs, and expectations. Inspired by the customer feedback, we have developed a product called “ChargeOn”. It is a Salesforce payment gateway that helps businesses to receive payment from anywhere in Salesforce. This solution addressed the complex problem of customers of integration payment gateway with Salesforce.

Be Prepared for Change

The only constant in business is change. Those who embrace change as an opportunity will thrive, those who will resist it will be left behind.

A business should always be prepared for change, because it brings the opportunity of adopting new market dynamics, gaining a competitive edge, and building resilience.

Blockbuster was once one of the world’s leading video rental giants with more than 9,000 stores, 84,000 employees globally, and 65 million registered customers in 1997.

In the early 2000s when Netflix was growing in popularity by introducing online video streaming and DVD-by-mail services. Blockbuster underestimated the growing popularity of online video streaming services and continued to focus on physical stores and rental fees. As a result, Blockbuster began losing market share, and by 2010 closed the majority of its stores and filed for bankruptcy.

Adopting the change is a must for businesses to remain in the market,

Let’s discuss how a business can prepare for change

Be proactive: Don’t wait for the change to affect your business like Blockbuster did and become history. Stay up-to-date with the industry trends and opportunities to align your goals and strategies accordingly to adopt changes early.

Create a culture of change: As said earlier, change is constant in business, therefore make it a natural part of the business. Provide training to help your team develop the skills and knowledge required to adopt the changes.

Get buy-in from stakeholders: Keep your employees, stakeholders, investors, and partners informed about the benefits and threats that signify the need for change. Motivate them to act fast and play an active role in the change management process.

Leverage technology: Technology is the biggest ally of businesses to succeed in change adaptation. Project management tools, collaboration tools, analytics tools – and the list goes on are some of the tools that you can use.

Develop a change management plan: When changes occur, you should have a plan in standing. This plan should define the scope of change like its benefits, objectives, risks, and impacts. Develop a timeline to ensure the change happens to your business conveniently. The budget should also be defined to make sure businesses can manage finance effectively.

Be flexible: It is not always expected that everything will go according to plan, therefore remain flexible to make adjustments in the plan.

Be a Thought Leader

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” – Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.

Being a thought leader is one of the best practices to establish credibility among your audience and give you more influence in the industry. This will help you attract more customers who value your expertise.

I realized the importance of being a thought leader, so I started the Salesforce Hulk YouTube channel to pursue my passion for helping people learn Salesforce and grow my business.

Today Salesforce Hulk has 105K+ subscribers, and I’ve created 645+ videos that have helped thousands of people to learn Salesforce. I’ve also been featured in industry publications and spoken at conferences.

How to become a thought leader?

Let’s consider the following steps:

• Specify your area of expertise: Choose a specific topic like I choose Salesforce that you’re passionate and knowledgeable about.
• Share original, informative, and engaging content: Produce original and informative content regularly that showcases your expertise.
• Be authentic, honest, and transparent: Avoid talking much about yourself. The content should be meant to provide value to your audience rather than promote yourself or your product.
• Establish yourself as a resource: Be available for your audience, listen to their feedback, solve problems, and offer helpful advice.

Final Take

In today’s business world, staying ahead of the competition is challenging. The best strategy is to continue pushing yourself and your company. In this blog, I have talked about a few winning business strategies that you can follow to position your business successfully and outshine your competitors.

Remember, successful businesses are always looking to raise the bar, rather than follow their competitors. Always emphasize being better, faster, and more innovative to win over your competitors.