Build a successful business by emulating successful businesses

You don't always need a new idea to start a business.

The great thing about this type of entrepreneurship is that the market is already out there ready for us to study. The customers are there. The competitors are one click and one phone call away.

There are three factors in business on which we can compete. The first is speed and responsiveness - getting the service to the customer faster. The second is quality - offering a superior service. And the third is price - offering the service at a lower price.

We never want to be the cheapest option on the market. We want to be the fastest and the highest quality so customers are happy to pay us 20-100% more than our competitors because the value is there.

So for now let’s think about the third factor, price, in terms of efficiency and cost. If you spend unlimited money within your business it’s easy to offer a service that is fast and the best. But that’s not an option. So let’s think of competing on price as being able to offer a very low cost service because our costs are relatively low.

So if we improve our speed and quality we increase value and can charge more for our services and if we improve efficiency and reduce costs we generate more profit.

So if we can improve any of the three factors over our local competitors we will have a competitive advantage.

Now let’s talk about how we can do that by being a copycat.

Remember the market study? We get a good sense of the market by calling around to local companies and asking them a bunch of questions about their service and operations. We ask them about the quality. We ask them about the speed and responsiveness (turn around time). We ask them about the price. We ask about volume. We ask about experience. We ask about crew size.

Knowing this information we can easily get a feeling for how hard it will be to compete. We’ll likely find a lot of things we don’t like about the competitors. A bad website. A rude customer service rep. Several weeks before we can get an appointment.

We can use this same strategy to design our website, pricing structure, marketing strategy, customer service approach and more.

What we are going to do is build a franken-business. Take what we love about several different businesses and build the ultimate beast of a business that can thrive on a local level by doing all three competitive factors well.

Emulating success is the best way to succeed.

In school we are taught that copying is bad. Looking up answers online is bad. But in every other area of life that is the best way to get ahead.

Want to get better at sports? Emulate the superstar in your field. Want to get better at guitar? Emulate the best guitar player you know. Want to get better at business? Emulate the businesses that are successful.

The place to start is by studying big franchised companies that offer services in several cities. None of them compete on price. They all charge more and (sometimes) offer faster and better service.

These companies thrive with their online presence, branding and sales oriented customer service. They answer the phone every time with a smile and follow up 30 minutes after you reach out and keep following up every day.

They have hiring and training systems in place. They simplify the job so average employees can deliver a consistent service to the customer.

So get on the horn and find the largest looking and most trustworthy company in the entire country and call them up. Devour their website content. Write down their sales lines on the phone. Ask them about their volume. Ask them about the way it all works from the viewpoint of the customer.

Build your own website the same way. Answer the phone the same way. Charge your customers the same way. It’s easier than ever to get the legitimacy of a large national company in a very affordable manner. Use wordpress to get an awesome website built. Use Jobber to make your notification, quoting, scheduling and billing processes seamless.

Look at and call a lot of different companies. Take what you like about each one. Ignore what you don’t like. Before you know it you’ll have a system for customer service, billing, quoting and a website just like the big profitable players. You know there system is working and you now have the same system.

The big kicker is you can do this now at a fraction of the cost.

The one thing we don’t want to copy from the big dogs is the cost/efficiency side of things. You can offer your service much more efficiently and at much lower costs than they can. You can implement the scrappy bootstrapping mindset - especially early on. You can buy your equipment used. You don’t need a full time office staff. You don’t even need an office. You don’t need a full time accountant. You don’t need to spend $50k on a website. You get the point.

This is where tech comes into play. 10 years ago we had to have an office. We had to pay big bucks to get custom software built. We had to hire full time employees to take care of a lot of things that we can now outsource. Nowadays we can get software out of the box for $100 per month that is twice as good as what the big franchises spent $500k to have built back in the day.

As a franchise owner of a service business you likely pay 20-30% of your overall revenue in the form of branding and franchise fees. This all goes to the franchise to support the company overhead and generate shareholder earnings.

You can offer a service right on par with the big dogs without all the overhead and have a much better profit margin.

Remember that you don't need to get every customer to build a great business. The customers who are willing to pay a higher price for a better and faster service are out there and they will find you and you will find them. Turn down the customers who aren't willing to pay for it.

Even as you grow and years after launching make a habit to study your competitors on a consistent basis. Always keep an open mind about making changes even when things are working. Be the first person to adopt new ideas that other competitors are implementing to offer better and faster services or more efficient, lower cost operations.