Building Sustained Competitive Advantage

Building a sustained competitive advantage for your business over your competition for your online businesses specifically requires enormous pinpoint concentration on the assets we possess that can be differentiated.

Further, to build such an awesome sustained competitive advantage, we must always strive to achieve a unique, consistent difference from our competition that cannot be copied.

In this article, I am going to teach you how to build a competitive advantage with any product in any niche, by giving you the 10 Most Important questions you will need to ask yourself and answer to build an advantage over your competition.

Understanding exactly what sustained competitive advantage is and how this all works can certainly be an arcane topic.

So if you ever need 1-on-1 coaching form me while you are building your business, please feel free to reach out to me in my wonderful online community where you can try out the platform for FREE.  

There are affiliate links within this post. What this means is that if you decide to purchase anything through one of my links, I'll be rewarded with a small commission at absolutely no extra cost to you. This small commission helps me run and maintain my website.

Sustained Competitive Advantage Defined

What is sustained competitive advantage for your business and how do you build it over your competition? Let’s start here.

First let’s start thinking about food.

Unfair advantage is like your Grandma’s Secret Sauce, the sauce she used in her favorite dish she made for you every time you visited her house. And unfair advantage is like your Grandma’s recipe. It isn’t just one thing, it is a unique combination of several special things that together produce an exceptional dish.

It is the same for building unfair advantage in our online businesses. Each bullet point of our plan should contribute at least one element to our unfair advantage.

The Business Plan: Your First Step to Sustained Competitive Advantage

Your first step and most important component to a sustained competitive advantage is the formation of your business plan. No matter how large or small your business is, every business needs to have a well- written business plan.

Whether it is to provide a blueprint for your business or to attract backers, a business plan is essential for the success of your company.

The first thing you will need to know is what are the 9 Parts of a Business Plan.

The 9 Parts of a Business Plan

According to SBA.gov, they recommend that the 9 Parts of a business plan are to include:

Now that you know the 9 Parts of a Business Plan, how will you write a business plan to contribute to your company’s sustained competitive advantage?

You will first need to assess what are your best assets and strengths of your new company, and what are the most compelling products and services you will be offering.

Then you will need to leverage those best assets and strengths of your company to create your best sustained competitive advantage over your competitors.

Well, what do I exactly mean by this?

What I mean is when you are writing a business plan for a new business, each element of your plan should contribute at least one element to your sustained competitive advantage.

And each person in your dream startup team (even if that person is only you!) should also contribute one or more elements to your competitive advantage.

Take a look at how this all works.

The Elements for Building a Competitive Advantage

The rest of this article describes how the process all works.

Your next step is for you know what are the elements for building a sustained competitive advantage over your competition.

First you will need to ask yourself all the right questions and then to give yourself all honest answers.

Record the following The 10 Most Important Questions list down on a piece of paper or on a tablet, PC, or your phone.

The 10 Most Important Questions

Here are the 10 Most Important Questions you need to ask yourself and honestly provide answers for about your competition to build a sustained competitive advantage over them:

Conclusion: Comments on Gaining an Advantage

Here are what some of the great members in our wonderful online community have said:

I am a big fan of having a business plan. A plan helps define your business, unique selling point, and its customers. – Anonymous

Some high quality ideas here, the best of which I believe is number 1. Once you really know about customers' wants and needs, a lot of the rest can follow. - Anonymous

Very insightful, and all true. Thank you. It would be a good idea if all of us answered these questions for our businesses and ourselves. - Anonymous

In “Building a Sustained Competitive Advantage for Our Business, Part 2”, we will go into an in-depth study of each of these important questions and “drill down” to get a richer appreciation of how each of their elements can specifically play into your businesses’ sustained competitive advantage.

As always, thank you very much for reading and I look forward to any and all of your comments.