Two easy steps to business success

Details: Thursday, 14 April 2011 19:48; Hits: 469

I used to be involved in one of the most demanding retail environments in the world. Actively involved in the success of internal corporate communications at the John Lewis Partnership, Britain’s leading retailer with over $12 billion in trade each year, I once met one of its most successful managers who told me that he used to be afraid of talking to groups of people.

“To overcome this fear, I took some public speaking courses,” he said, “and made a point of facing my fear as often as I could.” At the time he was telling me this he had become one of the Partnership’s most successful store managers and had developed a highly charismatic persona.

The point he drove home to me that day was the fact that he had found his weakness, the one point which was holding him back and limiting his success. Having identified it he tackled it head on and made it one of his greatest strengths.

We all want to succeed in the online business world. That is part and parcel of why we are here, working late in the evening at our computer screens and why you are, now, reading this. The desire to succeed however is not enough if you have not identified what it is that’s holding you back. That weakness acts like a brake that’s always on.

Step one: if you want to succeed discover what is limiting your success and eliminate it.

What caught my attention in the news the last couple days was the fact that Apple shares took a beating. The company is performing well. It is about to bring in a new version of its successful iPad and in terms of performance there is nothing which would appear to trouble it. Yet investors are wondering whether the company will be able to survive the departure of leader Steve Jobs who is taking a leave of absence for health-related reasons.

Steve has made a name for himself for being uncompromising in innovation. This has transferred itself to his company image which has, despite its numerous product quality issues, become synonymous for innovation.

There is a saying here, propagated by Jim Hightower, the colorful Texas populist: “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.” The ‘middle of the road, the safe course plotted by CEOs who were unwilling to expose themselves or their companies to high risk, these days, leads to little more than lacklustre performance and eventual decline.

For better or for worse, consumers have learnt, in a changing, fast-paced, seemingly innovative world, to look for leadership and follow it. Be great in one thing and everyone instantly thinks that you are great at everything. Miele, the manufacturers of leading quality home appliances, made a reputation for laundrette washing machines which hardly needed to be serviced. They leveraged that into domestic washing machines of truly superior quality and now produce average quality fridges, kitchen fans and cookers which, however, sell well and at an above-average price because of the perceived value of their name.

The same lesson is played over and over again. Fujitsu which makes great films (yeah, an anachronism) also creates cameras, copiers and print papers.

Step two: become an undisputed market leader in one area and leverage that to succeed in others.

These two lessons are all it takes to really succeed. Sure, you need knowledge of online marketing techniques like SEO Help and Online Marketing Help can give you but that is knowledge which is functional and the tools they give you are just tools. Unless you know what’s holding you back and have started to beat it and have also started to make a name for yourself, all the tools in the world and all the knowledge of SEO and online marketing is not going to help you very much, at all.