Wal-Mart has caused the death of countless small businesses.

As a small business owner, how do you compete with Wal-Mart?

The answer is simple - you don’t. Don’t play their game. Play your own game. You should be striving to find ways to increase value, not ways to play commodity price games…you will lose.

Use your small size to your advantage, Wal-Mart will never be able to provide the specialized focus or outstanding service that you can.

You’ve been in a Wal-Mart. We all have. Do you ever see Wal-Mart offering:

• Personalized service?
• A Niche focus?
• Premium offerings?
• Exclusivity?
• Specialization?

No.

If your competitive strategy involves having the lowest price, you’re extremely vulnerable to someone with more buying leverage than you have and higher economies of scale.

A competitive strategy based on unique, outstanding service is much harder to replicate than one predicated on offering the lowest price. And as a small business owner, that’s a good thing because the lowest price typically means higher volumes are needed to obtain the same profit, which is difficult for a small business to do. As luck would have it, offering personalized service, premium offerings and outstanding service allow you to charge a premium and make more profit on fewer sales.

Welcome back again!