Strategies To Gain An Unfair Advantage

Almost every company I know is struggling to bring new business in at the pace required. 

Why? 

Well, that is an interesting question but I think by now most of us know that our methods are outdated and simply don’t work. The better questions are how do we keep new business flowing in? 

What should be done instead of what we continue to do that doesn’t work? 

I’ve always had a fascination with weeds. They are amazing. Strong, resilient, persistent and they can literally take over an area. My friend Stu Heinecke and I share that same fascination only I know he is more fascinated than me because he wrote a whole book on them called How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed. 

Weeds have an unfair advantage and Stu wants all company leaders to understand what that is and how it can be applied to their business so that they can dominate the market. 

There are many strategies to gain that unfair advantage and Stu is here today to help you pick the best ones for your business. 

Find out why having the mindset of a weed will give your company an unfair advantage and possibly even market domination. 

Highlights:

04:14 Having a network is very important. Being able to get introductions is very important. I mean, that works. That's a shortcut.

04:37 [If you can’t get an introduction] You need to do something audacious, not just audacious, but also you need to do something that's relevant… something that has the person saying, Oh my gosh, who is this? I love the way you think.

07:01 books are still a valid way to stand out, even if you haven't written one, send some of your favorite books…I’m helping you to learn…

09:58 Alice Heineman says you can tell a lot about a person just by looking at their pipeline.[the caption on a cartoon that Stu sent to Alice ahead of the interview]

12:36 one of your [Alice Heiman] great unfair advantages is that you show up usually as a speaker at events

16:14 what is it about weeds that causes them to spread and grow and dominate and makes them such tough competitors? Do they have a unified model? And it turns out they do, they leverage a fierce mindset.

17:11 if a business doesn't have unfair advantages, it won't exist for long.

19:20 you want your competitors looking at your unfair advantage and saying how the heck are we going to beat that?

22:23 Why would we talk about a mindset when we're talking about plants? They don't have brains.

23:07 You can't grow your business like a weed if you don't have the right mindset. If we're still having our salespeople sell the way they sold ten years ago, it's not going to work.

24:01 I should add a couple more attributes to mindset. Emotions get in the way. Your actions should lead your emotions, not the other way around. Don’t ask ‘Do I feel like going to the gym?’ Go to the gym and then see how you feel. Do everything at scale through collaboration.

28:47 Here's the really cool thing about weeds. They thrive in disrupted ground. We are coming into a recession, another word for disruption, and it’s an opportunity to thrive if you have the right mindset.

31:08 One way to thrive is to eliminate any 1 to 1 leverage. If you are part of the deliverable stream, you need to fix that because you become a bottleneck to your growth. Moving toward multi-channel collaborations is another way to thrive.

About Our Guest:

Stu Heinecke is a bestselling business author, marketer and WSJ cartoonist. His first book, How to Get a Meeting with Anyone, was named one of the top 64 sales books of all time. His latest, How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed, lays out a complete model for explosive business growth, based on the strategies, attributes and tools weeds use to grow, expand, dominate and defend