Competitive Advantages and Disadvantages

The Products and Services Section of a Business Plan is the “meat” of the plan. Before developing this section, you should have completed the development of your Company, Operations and Management Section of your business plan. In this section, you will describe your company’s different products and services. You will include information on your competitor’s services and products, identifying where your product and service offering is unique. Here you establish your competitive advantage, as well as, your competitive disadvantages or where your products and services are weak compared to your closest competitors.

Perform a Resource Audit of Your Company

A Resource Audit is an honest self-evaluation of your company.  In this analysis you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT), which will be considered in your Marketing Plan and addressed in your Strategic Plan.  In this section you develop your product and service price stages, features and value to be amply exploited in the Marketing Plan.  Customer identification, analysis and segmentation starts in this Section to be afterward developed in the Marketing Plan.

This Section is a Building Block for the Marketing Plan Section

The success of the Marketing Plan section of a business plan is contingent on the work performed in the analysis of a company’s products and services. This section will provide the fundamentals in developing a good Strategic Marketing Plan. Areas to concentrate on include analysis of competitive advantages and disadvantages, initial SWOT analysis, and price point analysis. All of this will be expanded and fully explored in the next section of the business plan, the Marketing Plan.

Template for the Products and Services Section

1)     Products and Services Description

2)     Awards, Honors & Achievements

3)     Case Studies

4)     Product and Service Mix and Price Points

5)     Product and Service Analysis

6)     Life Cycle

7)     Production Strategy

8)     Research and Development Strategy

9)     Space Utilization

10)  Departments Descriptions

11)  Future Products and Services

12)  Effects of Technology

13)  Computerization Requirements

14)  Company Sales Literature and Brochures

15)  Internet Strategies

16)  Electronic Ordering and Fulfillment

17)  Inventory Method and Management

18)  Regulatory Compliance

19)  Product and Service Liabilities

About The Article Author ~ Frank Goley, Business Consultant with ABC Business Consulting

Frank Goley has the expertise and experience to work with small and medium size businesses as a business consultant, business turnaround consultant, business plan writer, business plan expert, small business consultant, business coach, business plan consultant, marketing consultant, business planner and online marketing consultant, and seo consultant. Frank works for ABC Business Consulting, and he has been helping companies to succeed for many years. Frank wrote his first business plan over twenty years ago. He is an expert in developing business plans, marketing plans, funding plans, strategic plans, turnaround plans, web marketing strategies, and project specific business plans. Frank is the author of a business plan book, The Comprehensive Business Plan Workbook – A Step by Step Guide to Effective Business Planning, and he has over 50 published articles and 30 E-books on business success strategies. He also writes the Business Success Strategies Blog and publishes the Business Success Newsletter.

We are regularly asked about both the wisdom and practice of running multiple app versions on the same box.   While this is often responded to by people with the obvious question of -Why would someone want to do this? – it is, nonetheless, a valid question.  The way to maintain and regularly use multiple versions of a single PC application is somewhat involved but is presented below.  Before we get into the specifics of how it is best done, let us dispense with the justification for doing it in the first place.

Running multiple versions of the same application is typically justified based simply on need.  Hopefully, a detailed example should suffice.  If you have a website authored with MS FrontPage and you also need the enhanced functionality of MS Office 2007, you might find yourself in need of running both MS Office 2000 and 2007 on the same box.   If you add MS Office 2007 to an Office 2000 mix – running it on the same box – you may, indeed, have enhanced functionality but very definitely at the cost of a greatly complicated operating environment.  Specifically, having in this case two versions of MS Office, so as to provide for the continued usage of one of its Modules – i.e. FrontPage – means that unless you alter it somewhat you will often incur major problems and unpredictable results.  This specific situation calls for a reduced version of 2000 – i.e. only FrontPage – reinstalled after deleting all of 2000.   Then you would have the desired operating environment without the complexities of two, competing product families that use shared DLL’s, Registry Key Codes, etc.

Here are some tips for running dual-versions.   First of all, be sure that it is something that you want and need to do.  In the example above – RE: FrontPage – it is clear that there are no advanced versions of FrontPage, so maintaining a website created with it may be justified.  Nonetheless, you will eventually have to bite this bullet.

Assuming that you have satisfied yourself that duel-versioning is justified, your first step is to access the Vendors website and research this very subject – in specificity.  You might need to write them or pose questions on focus sites.

Next, make sure that you are installing the newer version of the application on top of – i.e. after – you have installed the earlier version.  Natural timing typically takes care of this.

Create a series of test projects to verify that your dual-versioning works.   This is extremely critical when extended-use projects involve real world customers or projects.

Then make sure that your Windows System Registry is clean and updated.  You can purchase and download a top registry software package that does this and also performs the other registry fix functions that accomplish any needed Registry Repair as a part of your newfound performance duality.

Note: Whether you’re in the dental marketing field, health care field, or even in the restaurant business sector, speak what your potential new patients or customers would want to hear on topics beyond your profession. This is smarter than wasting money on traditional business or dental advertising.

One of the most crucial functions of marketing and advertising is to attract as many people’s interest as possible.

Most people think of marketing and advertising only in terms of promoting your specific service directly. But getting yourself known and your services and products promoted is done very effectively in MANY other ways than the above. Illustrating this is the fact that there is an awful lot of business done on the golf course, or sitting next to someone on a flight across the country.

For example, on one flight I took recently, I was able to refer a job for a large computer installation at a school to a friend of mine because I happened to sit next to the Director of Computer Studies for that school on that flight. The conversation led to this rather simply after just a casual introduction and some small casual exchange about each other’s professional work.

In other words, one cannot overestimate the power of “finding another person’s point of interest” as an entrance point to your marketing messages!

Regardless of what you promote, whether you make a sales call to someone or whether a patient comes to you, the prospect is putting up his sales guard!

It sometimes takes a while to break down that shield . Yes, the prospect wants to buy, but he is on the defensive. He does not trust you.

The reason so much business is done on the golf course is because his guard, his “wall”, is down. Sales people, business people, and especially doctors are slow learners in this matter. Oh, they have heard of it, they even believe it most of the time, but for some weird reason, they don’t tend to do enough “just getting together” and finding their prospects’ point of interest and talk about those points. They only try to toot their own horn about their services.  

It must be that the subject is not well understood. Let me give you some additional insight into this:

You see, the more you talk to a person about “no matter what”, as long as there are some common interests, the safer and more familiar you become to him. People have many, many other interests than the one you are trying to promote to them. What you are providing as a service, from their viewpoint, is a very small part of their life, even if it is healthcare. To make them open to you and what you can do for them, you must find THEIR interests on many subjects unrelated to your profession and talk about those interests. This way they “get to know you”, they start to feel comfortable with you, and thus your new friend will be open to buying from you. It’s about building relationships.

After building this relationship, it becomes safe to talk to you because you did not right off the bat try to sell them.

After this, they will call on you to do business if the need arises! And they will start referring friends to you even though they have never used your service.

Talking about your expertise and diploma etc is useless as people are not necessarily equating all that to a person they can trust

People cannot judge how good or bad you are based on what you advertise, not knowing enough about your profession to tell, so they choose according to their relationship with you, or according to the relationship you have with someone they know. That is a safer choice in their mind.

I do not think that there is anything more powerful than creating a large amount of people to know well and be in communication with you on a great many different subjects. The easiest sales I have personally made are to people I have talked to about “no matter what”.

This is easier than you think!This is simple!And this is quite simple! All you need to do is to establish communication channels on which you can communicate to others about different subjects where you have common interests.

Ideally, those communication channels should be low maintenance and easy to set up so that you would have less time invested in it.

After all, you still have a family and you do not want to spend all your precious time sitting in rotary meetings.

This same communication channel should also be cheap enough to have no limitations on how much or how often you use it.

There is one channel, if you know marketing and public relations basics that meet these requirements, and can be used exactly as above. Perhaps you have guessed it.

It’s the Internet . This does not say that there are no other channels where you can meet people and share their interests – there are many, and they should be used. But the Internet is more and more the medium of the present and the wave of the future. There are programs which help you to automate your communication processes without tedious one-on-one communication.

A word of precaution, nevertheless —one must utilize marketing and public relations principles to properly utilize this channel. Otherwise, the “web” will just sit there doing nothing and another great opportunity will be wasted.

But learning and applying these marketing basics is actually very easy, and combined with the use of the web, is worth all the money and time invested many times over.

Don’t be left out of the loop and standing on the sidelines! Learn business or dental internet marketing and get your share of good customers.

Remember:  if you wnat new business , you must be willing to put yourself out there and make new connections with effective business or internet dental marketing. Increase communication channels with others who will assist you to spread the word-of-mouth for you without you paying for them.

Traditionally,  we would associate natural wood finishes such as maple, oak, beech or possibly  mahogany with office furniture construction.  All are perfectly suited   for the purpose and will ever have an important role to play within our working environments.

Today, however, with modern manufacturing techniques and recycled  materials such as MDF or MFC,  we can finish our furniture in more contemporary  styles.

White office furniture is increasing in popularity  and justly so. It’s clean looks contribute towards an up lifting ambience  which will in turn, affect the morale and productiveness of those who benefit from it’s purchase and installation.

Bright and fresh  white office furniture works well in all workspaces and complements it’s surroundings effortlessly. It has a timeless quality which works well with varying types of décor and with different styles  of interiors.

Shop online for a varied  selection of white office desks.  Many  shapes are readily available from standard rectangular desks to crescent and wave shaped  options with right or left handed options.  There are also different leg and frame colors to choose from.

White office filing cabinets  may be purchased to complement the desks, along with filing cabinets, offering a choice of two, three or sometimes four drawers. Similarly,  cupboards and bookcases abound.  All will offer flexible storage solutions for today’s contemporary  offices.

A white meeting table makes a bold statement in your conference area and will encourage lively communication and healthy debate.

White office furniture will make a simple and fresh impression and will be atmospherically peaceful.  Coloured walls – nothing too bright  but tasteful shades make for  the best choice when using white office furniture, as too much white can encourage  a room or office appear to be a bit ‘antiseptic’. Brightly coloured accessories such as filing trays and waste bins may be introduced to add a bold splash of colour.

You need good content of all kinds if you ever hope to write for the internet. The purpose of web surfing is to find certain types of information. You must be able to write good content, in other words, and you also need the knowledge in order to write it. If you have a website, for instance, you need to have good articles on it, and also on all your promotional materials like ezines. Even though there is a possibility that the article writing part can be outsourced to professional article writers, a great deal of the work can done for you. If you can speak clearly, you should be able to create good online articles. You will soon learn what it takes to write good articles that people will enjoy reading. The topic you choose for your blog can about Halloween Super Affiliate or simply anything you want, as long as it helps you practice your writing.

Any and all of your marketing campaigns, including those with articles, will benefit if you establish a plan or goal with them. You need to decide the goals that are most important to you and your business. Learning and using time management in your writing is one thing that will be of immense benefit to you. For example, consider and focus on the amount of time you’re spending on your writing, rather than the number of articles you’re producing each day.

Worrying about how much you’re getting done only hurts your efforts, so this approach gets rid of that time-waster for you. You will receive the added benefit of writing higher quality articles, and that will help your business over quantity. This kind of approach to time management and article writing has been proven by many to be more effective.

Your readers must be able to decipher what you’ve written. To put it another way, you must do more than just clump words together if you hope to write good content. A great way to write good content is to use organization with your content and then put lots of spaces between it. Bullets are a terrific way to provide your readers with what your article is about and they also give your readers information that’s easy to glean. It’s important to think about what your article will be about and what you’re going to talk about before you ever begin writing. It’s important for you to be clear as to what points you will be covering. You can list these important aspects and then use them to write your article. For example, if you’re writing about Halloween Super Affiliate, then you should just talk about it without using any jargon, so that anyone reading it can grasp what you’re saying without going through the dictionary.

When writing your articles, make them as real and believable as possible. You can follow a format that is still highly effective, and that is to tell a short, relevant story; give some examples to explain and offer personal experiences if you can. If you create software programs and are marketing software, then you can very easily give some great personal experiences as well as stories and examples. Another solution is to offer hypothetical scenarios or examples if you’re writing about something you are not personally involved in. Your marketing articles are designed to inform, create a desire to learn more, and create that initial connection which is important. So when you give them clear cut information, they’ll trust your knowledge and expertise.

So, you see that article writing isn’t all that difficult. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from trying, as you probably already have what it takes to write great content. Just keep in mind that you have to know what you’re writing about and what information you’ll talk about, and article writing will be easy. Just remember that when you’re writing about a topic, let’s say halloween make money online, make sure you don’t deviate from it and stick to it with the appropriate points.