Welcome to the Martial Art of Business Survival, Says Top Negotiation Speaker
Nearly anyone trained in the martial arts has a good laugh when watching evildoers attacking good guys in the movies. The hero faces dozens or even hundreds of foes, and each one lines-up and takes a shot at the champion, who smartly and deftly disables each in turn. “Why don’t they attack, simultaneously?” I keep asking myself. Because it’s a movie, dummy, and the hero must win. I believe this silliness is emblematic of our business challenges. In the slow, pre-Internet polite economy in which we’d participate, we could seemingly fend off one competitor at a time. Here’s how we used to look at price competition, in negotiations. “Company X’s price is 10% cheaper? Okay, we’ll show them. We’ll cut our price by 15% Aha! Take that!” We’d take about a month to go to press with another dead-tree brochure, and our foes would take about the same to respond, and so went our competitive cut-and-thrust. Quaint, wasn’t it? Just today, I read an article in Time Magazine that noted how until quite recently American architects could bill clients about $10,000 for certain designs. Now, these can be outsourced to China, and returned in a day or two, for about $600. Thus, it isn’t as if Architect “A” is competing against “B” in the old-fashioned, hand-to-hand combat, sense. If they’re competing, it is on an entirely different level, one that involves world-sourcing, and super-fast turnaround times, as well as inconceivable price-plunging. Where are the profits? Short answer: In innovating. We have to do something new, or something we’re used to doing but in a very novel way. And when we have done this, we have to quickly invent again, because the half-life of our market preeminence will be measured in days, weeks, and if we’re lucky, in months. I just heard about the Gazelle Theory. Gazelles awaken each day and have to run for their lives, literally, because predators are after them. But gazelles don’t have to outrun cheetahs and lions; only the slowest gazelle in the herd. And only by a step or two. That is, if they’re being pursued by only one predator. But today, in this world economy, there are fifty lions for every gazelle. We have to be faster than the fastest lions, or at least among the fastest if we want any of the spoils. Interesting challenge, wouldn’t you agree? Welcome to the all too real martial art of business survival!
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