Ms. Marketing: Fortune Telling

Dear Ms Marketing:  I know you don’t have a crystal ball, but I need some help with what to do about the future of my laboratory. Can you help?

First of all you need to ask some question about your business and the world around you.

Harvey Mackey’s column last week was about this same thing.  He said ,“that when Jack Welch was chairman of General Electric, he would regularly ask the top managers in the company’s 14 major businesses a series of questions about the global competition.  Theses were the questions and they apply to most business, including ours.

What are your global market dynamics today, and where will they be over the next several years? 
What actions have your competitors taken in the last three years to upset those global dynamics?
What have you done in the last three years to affect those dynamics?
What are the most dangerous things your competitor could do in the next three years to upset those dynamics?
What are the most effective things you could do to bring your desired impact on those dynamics”?

All of the questions asked shows that the power of other forces and people that can and will upset your plans for the future. If you look at this like a football game where every play is a winner until the ball is snapped, and then things start going wrong. 

 How do you make your company game plan work? Know your market.  Watch for new technology and be the source for your accounts.  Keep your staff up to date also.  You may not take all of your employees with you to meetings, so when you get back report what you have found.  It is like watching the game tapes the day before the game.

Ask your employees for input into your business. That want you to be successful this is your line of defense.  Your sales and production needs to work hand in hand.  Working together is always good for the team. Don’t let the competition see you not getting along.

Always be ready for change.  Our industry is changing daily.  You will survive if you keep playing the game. 

So when you are growing your business keep asking yourself “What can go wrong?”
You can not change your competitors but you can change you.

If everything came easy we wouldn’t know what it was truly like to succeed

We are all playing in this game called life. The people who succeed play to win and never     give up until the game is over.

Author Information

Dena Lanier

Lanier is president and owner of The Lab 2000, a dental laboratory serving a national market out of Columbus, Ga. She started her career in the dental field in 1980 with dentures and partials.  Since opening her laboratory is 1995, she has grown The Lab 2000 into one of the largest female-owned laboratories in the country. The Lab 2000 maintains it membership with the National Dental Laboratory Association, along with Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, Eastern Conference and the Southeastern Conference of Dental Laboratories. She is the 2009 president of the Georgia Dental Laboratory Association and serves as an NADL laboratory representative.