Competitive Advantage for Profit Enterprises – do or die

by Kim Throndson

July 17, 2025

Knox Mountain, Kelowna

As a business owner or manager you want to succeed.   You want to be profitable, or make your business unit profitable for the company, and achieve the enterprises goals.  You need an edge to lift the business above the competition.

Business Managers:  still important – what is your branch or business unit’s advantage over the competitors in the area – why aren’t you meeting your sales targets?  As the steward of the ship for the company your waters are different than a branch at a different location.  Can you report back to your head office the issues or differences?  Maybe what head office wants you to have as the core advantages doesn’t work in the location, political or economic environment.  Do you need to tweak it a bit or discuss with your head office some initiatives?

Competitive advantage is what your enterprise or unit does better than the competition, and it needs to be defined, or the enterprise or business unit will falter. 

HAVE A MISSION STATEMENT

DEFINE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

SUCCESS AND PROFIT

(See blog post 5 things to succeed)

Components of Successful Competitive Advantage:

A. Definition

The Competitive advantage should be defined, and narrowed down as a proposition. Think proposition because you are proposing a  solution to your customer’s problem,  and your enterprise does it better than the company down the street.  

Some examples of competitive advantage propositions are:

1.       Value  proposition – providing the best value for the customer based on what they are getting.  For Example providing high quality product or service for reasonable price.

2.       Specialized product/service proposition - not easily replicated so smaller number of competitors at the moment.

3.       Price - lowest price in the market

 You cannot be all things to all people.  It can be scary focusing on one proposition, but you can only do one thing successfully at a time.

B.      Target Market

By defining the enterprise or units competitive advantage, you will define your target market.  Again, it can be scary to narrow on a specific demographic but it will help you define how and where you spend your time and money, which as a business owner or manager is very limited.

C.     Invest the resources

Once you have defined the proposition, and target market, you know where to invest the time, talent, and budget.  For example, Walmart builds stores in low income areas of cities, not by downtown high rises.   Gucci stores are not in mainstreet rural areas.   Car dealership invest in training programs for their sales team, and IT back office to provide the best service.  

But build in the flexibility and keep your ear to the ground.  As the saying goes keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. As you become successful, don’t let your ego get in the way.  Always be scanning the horizon to what the competition is doing.  Amazon is not only a book seller these days.

D. Update

Things move fast in the digital age, so be prepared to adjust your competitive advantage.  Maybe the space is getting too crowed, if you are a specialized company.   You may need to move out of the space, or move to another proposition like value.  Camera companies and digital photography is  good example of the need to keep up with the competition and adapt.

You could also keep your proposition, but move linear on a product or service to match.  Maybe you have a law firm that is specialized in a certain area of law, but another law firm has opened down the street doing the same thing.  You want to keep the specialized proposition because you have the expertise.  You could move linear and start to offer specialized training in the area.

Summary

PROPOSITION

TARGET MARKET

RESEARCH

ADAPT