A Spoonful of Unconventional Makes the Conventionalism Go Down

Today's post for "Hit 'Em Where They Ain't" Week examines ways to look at your market and business to take advantages of opportunities where your competitors aren't located.

Many markets, especially in the business-to-business arena, are relatively conventional, i.e. they don’t necessarily have a lot of breakthrough, cool new developments such as the Apple iPhone. Even in these cases, however, there’s still a great opportunity to make a mark because in a conventional market, small doses of unconventional can really stand out. Sometimes, dramatic change comes from doing simple things that nobody else is doing.

Here are a few questions to ask and answer to help identify ways to be more unconventional in your own market:

• What are things that customers have been requesting that we’ve yet to deliver?
• What are the most frequent customer-precipitated exceptions to our product or service?
• What are the most frequent employee-created exceptions to our product or service?
• What are the best, most successful companies (regardless of industry) doing to grow customer relationships with their brands? How can we emulate them?

If a competitor isn’t already doing your answer to one of the questions above, you’re set with a potentially great opportunity for an unconventional move.