Over the next few days, I'm going to focus on the Five Big M's of Business:
- Market
- Model
- Management
- Mantra
- Marketing
The essential M is a Market! Although people joke around about having the skills to sell snow to Eskimos, a sustainable business must be built upon a foundation of a product or service that people desire to purchase to fulfill a want or need. Without a real market, any for-profit enterprise is doomed to fail.
Most markets exist around a problem that needs to be solved. Even companies that produce extremely high-end luxury goods such as hand-crafted watches and huge yachts are solving a problem for an elite group of people, as these firms focus the SES differential issue (e.g. status symbols are used to display privilege, power, wealth). Also, markets change as better 'answers' are discovered. For example, the travel industry has drastically changed over the past 150 years. For most of civilization, horses, mules, and camels were the best option for long distant journeys. Then, the technological breakthrough of the train changed that forever. However, although trains replaced horses, planes or cars are now the standard solution for most Americans. Problems are rarely solved once. Instead, markets are evolving systems that always seek better, faster, and cheaper.
If you want to dominate your market, offer a solution in a very unique way that offers significantly more benefits to your customer than any other competitor.