Competitive Advantage - Reduce The Gap Between Thinking & Doing

Employing Marketing's Version Of the "No-Huddle" Offense

By David Miranda

Enabled by technology, the pace of the marketplace has increased at warp speed and there is no "slo mo" or "pause" button on life's "remote". If the classic tale of the hare and the tortoise were written today, the technology-enabled "hare" would win. All things being equal, in today's marketplace, the advantage goes to the smarter and the quicker.

Competitive advantage, therefore, lies in reducing the gaps between thinking and doing - between planning and execution; between wanting and getting; between feedback and response.

Today's marketplace is a 24 X 7 global competition with no time outs. Competitors are pursuing your customers as we speak with new products and services employing new marketing channels and campaigns. In a world where preference is perishable, competitive challenges must be immediately countered and re-countered as necessary.

The best position to be in is the smartest and the fastest keeping your competitors off kilter. It's marketing version of the "no huddle" offense, i.e not giving your competition time to appropriately respond, as well as, impressing your client and customers on your responsiveness.

This approach demands reducing the gap between the thinking (what do we need to do to succeed considering the circumstances at hand) and the doing (flawlessly executing the plan).

Reducing "gaps" creates competitive advantage, so get on with it.