I have come across business owners who own businesses that sell brilliant products or offer exceptional services, but they always wonder why they are unable to penetrate their markets fully.
It often seems as if they might have done something wrong in the market, given the negative reactions to their offering.
This is just one of those questions that you, as a business owner, often ask yourself and you do so with the purpose of finding a solution.
Reasons why creating or adding value is not enough:
• It’s imperative that your product or service creates or adds value in the best way possible and best serves the intent of the end user of the product. Failure to do so will not only prevent many people from doing business with you, but will also create distrust in your offerings.
• We have to satisfy the question of relevance in terms of your offering, which refers to being up to date with current market trends, and what is expected from a product or service.
The mere fact that your product might not be up to date with current market trends could result in your business closing its doors. This is a mistake that most businesses make, especially those who have been in business for quite some time and are still using old and outdated methods which worked in the past to conduct business today.
I know for a fact that quite a number of businesses have gone out of business because of their products being obsolete and irrelevant.
Let’s look at an example about something that affects most of us daily, the street names changes in most of our cities. I remember how the street name changes almost got me into trouble when I moved back to Polokwane.
The city had introduced the one-way street system and, because I hadn’t been to the city for some time, I drove around thinking the routes were still the same. I almost got into an accident driving in the opposite direction in a one-way street.
Achieving relevance and adding value is like putting your ear to the ground to hear what is coming your way in order to be well prepared for it.
This helps you prepare different means of tackling the problem in the best way you know possible.
In a nutshell: finding business success is not only about creating value, it’s also about monitoring the trends and anticipating the challenges you may face.
Kholofelo Pholafudi is the author of The Psychology, Science & Art of Turning Contacts into Connections
