Leading Entrepreneurship

If your restaurant’s competition is defined by only the establishments in a 5-mile radius from your location, and you’ve established yourself as novel and beneficial against that group, you’re all set for life, right?

Well, no. You’re set for a while, but nothing lasts forever. Especially if you’re looking to grow.

Competitors will always look for a way to dilute your position in the market, but attempting to do what you do, or finding a novel and beneficial solution of their own. There may be room for everyone, but a growing firm need to always make more room for themselves.

Two primary research techniques that are traditionally ineffective for entrepreneurs are market research and opinion surveys. Among the problems encountered with these methods are they don’t directly result in product sales, people have a tendency to tell you what they think you want to hear, and achieving a true random sampling in your study can become costly and time consuming.

That is not to say that there is not a lot to be learned from customer feedback or data. It is that their ideas and past performance do not justify the move into a new and proven best practice.

So then where can great ideas come from? Try outside your market. This could be a firm a county away, a state away, or even in a foreign country. Groundbreaking ideas can also come from outside your industry.

How might you find out about best practices in another market? Secondary research could give you some clues. Secondary research is information gathered by a source other than you, such as trade associations, industry consultants, articles, blogs or press releases.

Your other option is primary research, which is gathered yourself from your travels, networking, or even using local University student teams to conduct research. Primary research has the benefit of locating fresh ideas not yet taking hold in your industry. Yet another benefit is that when you find a best practice yourself, you naturally tend to buy-in more easily to changing your own organization.

Primary research, on the surface, sounds like it might be easy. In practice, it can be difficult. Companies do not like giving away their secrets. They certainly do not like giving away financial data.

That’s alright. Your power of observation is stronger then what you might hear anyway. Visit these colleagues, not just once, but multiple times. Try different times on different days. Watch and interact with the staff. What are the employees willing to discuss with you? What areas are off limits?

Visit their website. What’s there? Are there press releases? Is there a news feed? What is the call to action? Call their main phone line. How many rings before an answer? How do they answer? Will they give you pricing info? What is the call to action used?

Most importantly: What is their position in the market?

When primary and secondary research cannot get you what you need, maybe the answer lies outside your industry. You may be processing copper wire, but there may be an inventory management technique used in the automobile manufacturing industry that you could easily adapt. You may be in the restaurant industry, but there are some customer service practices you could borrow from certain airlines.

When analyzing what you do, try to define your processes step by step. Then look around. You may get lucky and find a whole process that you can borrow. More frequently, however, it will be a step or two that you can effectively duplicate.

Best practices are everywhere. Seek them out. Better your business. Strengthen the relationship with your clients. Beat your competition.