Here are the strategies which took Reckitt & Colman to becoming a global business from a start-up, small business. With some modifications, you too can adopt these strategies to your business and experience similar success.
Expect Rough Times
It will be a big mistake for anyone to think their business will immediately start yielding good returns from the onset. Although there may be some businesses where success can be almost spontaneous, however, for a lot of business start-ups, it doesn’t happen that fast.
Majority of businesses require cultivating and nurturing over a period of time before they can begin to yield fruits. And that means, during this period you may not get anything significant the business, in spite of the huge time and money you may have put into it. At this time of the business you will need to exercise a great deal of perseverance so you don’t throw-in the towel so soon, before the business starts yielding returns.
Reckitt’s doggedness and perseverance even after losing all he had from two failed businesses kept him on to founding and sustaining another business, which today is a global conglomerate.
Be Open To Fresh Talents And Ideas
Ideas they say rule the world. The level of growth and success your business can ever attain depends on the quality of ideas you are running with. Therefore, to be successful, you must attract people with new and quality ideas; people who are full of energy and vibrancy, and who are excited about executing the ideas.
It is interesting to note that Reckitt’s business did not undergo any form of development until his children joined him with their ideas and energies.
You Really Have To Increase Your Product Line, Including Diversifying
It is a big risk to live on a single product or source of revenue. Anything can happen, especially in an industry with stiff competition, where competitors are constantly looking for ways to attain competitive advantage. They could discover innovative products that could make yours stink in the market place. And if that should happen, then there goes your business!
In addition, striving to offer multiple products enables you to utilize the best of your staff’s creativity; it generates excitement about your corporate brand, provides your customers opportunity to make choices; and of course, it boosts your revenue base.
Reckitt’s business actually began to establish itself as a purposeful and formidable entity that was prepared to survive centuries to come when it began to increase its product line, as well as diversifying into related areas by 1854.
Increase Your Sales Through Expansion
Just as you have to increase your product line, it is equally important to seek business in other geographical areas. You will be pleasantly surprised that apart from the increased total revenue from different locations, your foreign branches may even account for the greatest sales to your business. You may never know just how much demand awaits your products in foreign lands if you don’t spread out.
Part of Reckitt & Sons’ growth strategy was to seek new markets overseas, which it began to implement in 1864
Partnership Can Be A Great Success Factor
Two heads are definitely better than one, the same way that cooperation is more rewarding than competition. Wherever it is possible to combine resources with other companies in a partnership to effectively and efficiently serve the market, you can try it out. Individually, you will gain more in a partnership than in competition, which can take a great deal of your resources to sustain your market share.
Isaac Reckitt and Jeremiah Colman, realizing the huge benefits their businesses stand to gain by coming together rather than the suffocating competitive warfare they were into, began their partnership in 1913.
Innovation – Giving You A Strong Competitive Edge
Becoming a market leader is the desire of every business. One sure way of attaining this position is to create innovative products that strongly meet consumers’ needs in a way they cannot resist – products that provide highly needed solution that the best existing products do not offer. If you can achieve this, then expect consumers to shift your way in a flood!
Reckitt & Colman’s introduction of Dettol antiseptic won it a huge chunk of the market.
Concentrate On What You Can Do Best
Huge success in business comes when you have established your business as expert in an area. When consumers need a product or service in that area, you easily pop up in their minds as the expert to buy from or consult.
Therefore, to develop the needed expert position, you have to be focused and continue to do what you are best at doing, and over time you would have developed huge expertise on that area.
In addition to been recognized as expert by your target market, you will be able to save time and resources, leading to decrease in your cost of production when working on your area of expertise.
In an effort to remain focused, Reckitt Benckiser ensured it only acquired related businesses while selling off its firefighter business and Dr. Becher, which were not related to it core business.
Read Reckitt & Colman’s business success story here.
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