43 Keep and Expand Business Advantage
b'Thank you, first of all, for all the input and everything I\\u2019ve gotten from folks, the support, the rankings and reviews that I\\u2019m getting on iTunes and Stitcher, particularly iTunes where I can see the rankings. We\\u2019re number seven. To me, that\\u2019s absolutely awesome to be ranked at number seven in \\u201cWhat\\u2019s Hot\\u201d on iTunes. Again, I just thank you all, to all my supporters; I really appreciate it. Those rankings help us get more coverage.\\n\\nToday what I want to discuss is just the opposite of what we did last time. Last time, we were talking about branding and how to position our brand, your company, product, or service. Today, wherever you are, whatever you have, how not to lose or how you might lose your advantage. That is, lose your image and lose your status with those customers. To put it a certain other way, think in terms of all the companies you\\u2019ve seen that have made a change and they almost destroy themselves in the market.\\n\\nThink in terms of Coke when they came out with New Coke. Think in terms of what McDonald\\u2019s did, where it changed things quite a bit. Although they\\u2019re so big and prevalent, and they have such a long-term reputation, it does make them a little bit more vulnerable. Because remember years ago they had Ronald McDonald, and they had all kinds of things oriented around kids, and somebody would drive by with the kids in the car and the kids would be screaming: \\u201cI want to go to McDonald\\u2019s! I want to go to McDonald\\u2019s!\\u201d That\\u2019s not going to happen as much anymore, because they don\\u2019t have some of that same association. They gave up something, and it certainly does and is going to have an impact.\\n\\nAs we said with branding before, when a company gets itself, stands out, and owns a territory or owns a concept or an idea, it\\u2019s very difficult to penetrate it once they\\u2019re in a dominant position. Right now, for example, Verizon is well-known for having excellent coverage all over the country. I don\\u2019t know whether you\\u2019ve noticed it, but if you go to different places and you go to someplace where there are other representatives, you go into Best Buy or you go into Costco and you might see a T-Mobile person standing at the booth \\u2013 that person will start telling you things like (it could be another company), and I\\u2019ve heard this from T-Mobile, I\\u2019ve heard it from AT&T, etc.: \\u201cWe\\u2019ve all of a sudden invested a lot of money in towers around, so now we really have good coverage, too.\\u201d It doesn\\u2019t ring with the credibility of something that you already know. It\\u2019s somebody that\\u2019s claiming to have something \\u201cas good\\u201d as something that you\\u2019re sure of. It doesn\\u2019t work as well.\\n\\nWhat you have to do is you have to come up with something a little bit different in order to have that credibility. What if T-Mobile or somebody, and actually there are a couple of companies out there, that target more certain cities or certain locales? Keep in mind that there are a lot of people, a tremendous number of people that never leave their own city. If they never leave their own city, they don\\u2019t need Verizon\\u2019s coverage all over the place. Verizon has a position to it that you can get it wherever you are. They don\\u2019t have to worry about that, and they could have a discount for something. How does that change Verizon\\u2019s position? If they\\u2019re selling it a little bit cheaper for a particular city because of the locality, of course, Verizon would probably not match that price because that would be subject to having to give that price to everybody in that area that would be the travelers, etc., and they\\u2019re more nationwide. There\\u2019s lots of different things, and that\\u2019s an example of a niche that can occur, and what you might not want to do to counteract that.\\n\\nWhat you\\u2019re doing is you\\u2019re looking for an opening whereby possibly the power player can\\u2019t match you. This works in small companies, large companies, all over. As an example, when I was making a presentation at a large international automotive conference put on by the University of Michigan,'