Page 89 - Business Plans that Work A Guide for Small Business

80 • Business Plans that Work

Figure 5.1 Company and Product Description

• Company description
• Product description
• Competitive advantage
• Entry strategy
• Growth strategy

and forcefully identify your venture’s competitive advantage. Based upon
your competitive analysis, why is your product better, cheaper, faster than
what customers currently have access to? Your advantage may be a func-
tion of proprietary technology, patents, and distribution. In fact, the most
powerful competitive advantages are derived from a bundle of factors
because this makes them more difficult to copy. Lazybones claims that
its competitive advantage is in its operations, refined over 15 years of
operating experience. Like many businesses, success is a function of su-
perior execution rather than some unique product attribute. While there
are many competitors and substitutes to the Lazybones service, Dan has
been successful because he can efficiently clean and return large quanti-
ties of laundry at a price that the customer is willing to pay. The lesson is
that your competitive advantage may be hidden in how you provide the
service, in addition to the service itself. On top of operational excellence,
Lazybones’s competitive advantage lies in understanding its customer.
Students are newly departed from their home, and parents want to ease
that transition. Thus Lazybones provides extensive customer service to
ensure that the user (student) and payer (parent) are both happy with the
product.
Once you have delineated your product, a perceptual map of your
product and your competitors’ products nicely communicates what makes
your company special. Pick two or three of the key attributes identified
in the competitor profile matrix and show how your venture differs from
the competition. A competitor perceptual map visually illustrates what
gaps in the market you expect to fill. We also suggest you bullet point the
other elements that form the basis of your product/service competitive
advantage.
As you can see, the business plan leads the reader in a logical progres-
sion. The goal is to create an understanding of your vision and make it
tangible. So, again, we build from previous work, in this case our clear
description of the product, to the strategy for introducing that product.