When you’re running a business, there’s almost a 100 percent chance that your product or service will not be exclusive. No matter what, there will always be other businesses providing the same or similar products or services.
Knowing this, you try to compete on one or more of the following:
- Providing a higher-quality product or service
- Providing a product or service that has the same features, but at a lower price
- Increasing your marketing activities to improve your business’s visibility . . .
. . . and so forth. In other words, you’d try a bunch of tactics to beat your competition and stay ahead of the curve.
How about this: What if you treated this game of business not from a single-winner point of view, but rather, an everybody wins approach?
If you’ve got 20 to 30 similar businesses in your area, you can organize a joint trade show with them. Here are some ideas about approaching this opportunity:
- Call them, and talk to them about the show. A trade show has the potential to benefit everyone, so chances are it will be easy to persuade many to join in.
- Reach out to all business sizes—large, medium, and small. Focus on and encourage diversity as much as possible.
- Make it easy for businesses to be part of the event. Don’t make it too expensive or too resource intensive.
- For your first trade show, chances are about one-third of businesses will agree—that’s about 10 out of 30.
- Prepare joint brochures and put in joint marketing efforts to gather as many people as possible for the trade show.
- Once you have executed one such event, rinse and repeat every year or so.
Serving customers through such trade shows and showcase events accomplishes many tasks:
. . . It establishes great business-consumer connections.
. . . It increases the status of every participating business.
. . . It provides a platform to gather consumer feedback to further improve your product or service.
It’s a win-win-win for all three: you, your competition, and the consumers.
It’s not easy, and many shy away from organizing such joint trade shows or conferences. Standing right next to our competition, it’s easy to feel a high level of insecurity.
But no one stops you from doing this—it’s only your fear.
Begin today. Pick up your phone and call.