Tweet

Building Windmills

Written by: Nicholas Fraser

Article Overview: One can look at 2009 with doom and gloom; and just try and survive. Or one can look for the opportunities. I suspect that the coldness of the recession/depression may find out most so called shelters however safe they seem. On that note I went to a presentation before Christmas and heard a rather inspiring Chinese proverb. And no it was not that old saw that we should live in interesting times (if I hear that again I will scream, scream, scream until I am sick). Some boring times would be quite nice at the moment thank you! Anyway the quote was “When the wind blows there are those who build shelters and those who build windmills”

Building Windmills

Building Windmills

One can look at 2009 and 2010 with doom and gloom; and just try and survive. Or one can look for the opportunities. I suspect that the coldness of the recession/depression may find out most so called shelters however safe they seem.

On that note I went to a presentation before Christmas and heard a rather inspiring Chinese proverb. And no it was not that old saw that we should live in interesting times (if I hear that again I will scream, scream, scream until I am sick). Some boring times would be quite nice at the moment thank you! Anyway the quote was

“When the wind blows there are those who build shelters and those who build windmills”

The temptation at the moment is to hunker down and repeat proven methods, cutting costs and waiting for the recovery if and when it comes. However, history has shown both in the 1970’s and the 1930’s that that strategy can be flawed if the recession/depression goes on for a prolonged period of time. Businesses go bust waiting for an upturn.

So the answer is to find or do something new; so how to do that? Well I would say (wouldn’t I) that you should get some outside help but aside from that perhaps you need to focus on the three points in the business triangle.

Namely The Market, The Competition and You

The Market

What does the market want or require? What opportunities are the market conditions creating? What market are you attacking? Perhaps taking advantage of the lowness of the dollar and the euro may provide an opportunity to export?

The Competition

What are your competition not, repeat not, providing to the market. How strong are they? Are they likely to go under? Is there an opportunity to buy them out and so take market share? Can you undercut them and so force them out? Are there opportunities to work in partnership with them to generate a return for the benefit of both parties? I have spent the last year on behalf of one of my clients talking to his competition anonymously. Not only have we built up good market knowledge but we have also enabled a number of partnership deals, two acquisitions and a third acquisition in progress. (To understand more about that strategy give me a call)



You?

What skills and advantages do you have that you are not utilising to their fullest extent? Can you fill a gap that the market requires and the competition is not meeting? The key is to look at the first two and then yourself to really assess where you should focus your efforts.

In formal strategic marketing terms this is called an External and Internal review leading to a SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) analysis. You may have done this before but I do encourage you look at the issue afresh. If you have a strong market share and a reasonable profitability perhaps now is the time to sacrifice margin and attack the competition? It may suggest getting rid of some product lines and focusing on a growing area. Whatever it suggests you should create an action plan for 2009 and 2010 to make something happen rather waiting for it to happen to you.

Related Articles
  Wall Street Journal covers African ingenuity
  Don Quixote v Superman
  My Boss is not My Brother
  Lessons from Solar
  Quick Prospecting Tools

Article Tags: compatibility, div, endif, fareast, footer, gte, mso, object classid, orphan, paper source, shape, style definitions, style name, times new roman, xml, zoom



Related Forum Posts
Type of business with building - If you owned a building and Wal-Mart was opening its doors across the street in a previously unoccupied area (along with 12-14 small shops), what type of business would you start? Here are the considerations: 1. Money is a non-factor 2. Building is fairly large (10,000) square feet 3. Building is on the corner of a busy intersection (about to get much busier)
Re: Seven Marketing Strategies To Attract The Affluent Buyer - Hello, Building confidence with positive communication skill is very helpful and it helps in attracting consumers. Regards, sarah_9
Re: Quick Ways To Utilize SEO Effectively - Hi Mary, It will only help if those websites are linking back to you, and then that's still not very affective. It's much better to generate one-way backlinks to your site. Building quality backlinks is the name of the game.
Need help in Team Building Activity.. - Hi! I am tasked to organize a Team Building Activity in the office. I would like to seek help from you guys on ideas on how to make it worth the time and effort. I want the team to ask for more team building activities after this one. Thanks! jane
Re: Need help in Team Building Activity.. - Team Building Activities are my favorite part. Last time our team was out for an expedition. We got a map and had to find the cave were we also slept and on our way there were other activities. It was an extreme team building and it was organized by a specialized company.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

What I Really Want Is...

Providing Feedback

Tips for the Novice Traveler

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.