The Most Powerful Business to Have

There are fundamentally only four types of businesses:

1: PRODUCT Driven
2: SERVICE Driven
3: MARKET Driven
4: SYSTEMS Driven

Only the third puts the focus where it needs to be: on the customer. Instead of asking: how can we sell this thing we want to sell? – it’s smarter to ask:

What does our customer or prospective customer (passionately) desire? And how we give it to him?

As customers, we’d be a lot happier if more businesses were focused outward, on us, instead of inward, on themselves.

Lee Iaccoca once told me that, at Chrysler, and throughout the auto industry, the focus was always on more appealing physical designs, new grilles, more efficient engines, better safety, dashboard features. When they were designing the mini-van, they spent an inordinate amount of time talking with mothers of three kids, car pool parents, and similar consumers about what they really would like to have in a van.

The #1 winner: cup-holders.

He later said they won big by selling $20,000.00 cup-holders with a van attached. That’s what I mean by being Market-Driven.

— Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is an author, consultant and business coach. Additional information at www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com