The Clifton Review 

The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.

While the 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story, his incredible business success over these past fifty years and an inside look at how he did it, The Clifton Review will also continue to address current affairs as they relate to the good of The Bahamas.

When The Competition Has You On The Ropes

By P.J. Malone

Is new competition threatening your business survival?

Competition is a challenging reality for businesses. Therefore, it is an appropriate business threat to use to demonstrate the business principles we have been discussing. 

In providing a practical example for applying these principles, let’s begin by setting a SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goal to address this threat to many businesses. In setting the goal, we have to determine exactly what it is we want to achieve. 

In this case, you want to keep your percentage of the market. In other words, you don’t want to lose customers to the new competition. Another way to view it is that you don’t want a lower income because you are losing business to the new competition. In actuality, these are two different things. You have to determine your specific focus to be able to decide on a goal. 

If you have already lost customers to the new competition, then your focus should be on increasing income or profit levels so as not to suffer income losses due to the loss of customers.

Yet, this focus on increasing your income can also be your goal even if you have not yet lost customers. If, for example, the competition is offering a similar product using new technology that you couldn’t possibly hope to compete with, and you are sure you are going to lose customers going forward, then you may want a goal focused on increasing income.

The reason your specific focus matters is because your goal will drive your business strategy. The strategy you identify has to be geared towards what you are trying to achieve.

For example, if your goal is to increase business income because you’ve lost customers to the competition, a business strategy of focusing on customer loyalty may stop the bleed to the new competition, but it won’t necessarily achieve your goal of increasing the business income.

Before we identify the best strategy/ies, let’s describe the goal in SMART terms. So if our focus is on keeping your existing customers—not losing them to the new competition—then here is what the goal would look like:

‘Maintain business customer base of 150 current customers throughout the current fiscal year.’

Is it SMART?

Specific – This goal focuses on keeping a specific number of customers.

Measurable – This goal is measurable in that the number of customers the business has can be counted.

Achievable – This is achievable for the simple reason that the customers are already doing business with the company, which means they likely already like doing business with this company, or at the very least, desire the product/s and or services they are purchasing.

Relevant – This goal is relevant in that it seeks to avoid losing customers to the new competition, which speaks to the core threat to the business.

Time-bound – This goal is set to be achieved for a fiscal year.

If the business has already lost customers, then a focus could be on increasing income so as to not suffer financially from the loss of customers to the competition. A SMART goal for this focus could look like the following:

‘Increase the business income by 20% for the upcoming fiscal year.’

Once again, this is specific in terms of ‘increasing income’; it is measurable since income can be measured; it is achievable in that it is a relatively low percentage to aim for; it is relevant in that increasing income can make up for the income lost from the customers who went over to the competition; and it is time-bound with a focus of achieving the goal over a fiscal year.

Next, we will identify strategies that could be used to achieve these goals and discuss a strategy that fashion mogul Peter Nygard successfully used when faced with a business threat.