The Role of Luck in Success

There are a lot of cliches relating luck to success including:

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."

"The harder I work the luckier I get."

"Chance favors the prepared mind." Louis Pasteur

The underlying theme of the above quotes is that  by preparing yourself or you company for the moment when opportunity arises is mere chance, although chance that a certain event may happen when you are prepared to take advantage of it, but hard work and preparation as well as opportunity that cause results that may appear to be luck.

So what can we do to put ourselves and our companies in a position to be lucky?

Here is a process that will help you be lucky:

1. Develop the resources withing yourself and your company to do what you and do it well.
   
2. Develop you skills, employees, systems, process and relationships that will help you take advantage of opportunities. 
3. You need to keep looking for opportunity. If you make left handed widgets make sure you are looking for opportunities that are available to you to use your expertise in left handed widgets to produce new or innovative products. If you are not looking you will not find. 
4. Make sure your skills and the skills of you employees are developed enough to be flexible to adjust to new situations and processes. 
5. Approach all phases of you operation as a process and document how you do what you do, what resources are necessary and the actual steps to perform the operation so the knowledge can be passed on should you lose and employee or adjusted to improve efficiency or to perform a new task. 
6. Develop outside relationships such as banking that allow you to quickly increase capacity if and when necessary. 

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Unique Selling Proposition

            I know of three stone fabricators that have all done business for years on the same block in a midsize town in Wisconsin. After years of a peaceful co-existence the market got tough and  one of the shops decided to put a sign in the window saying: "We make the best stone countertop is town."

            Not to be out done the second shop soon put a sign in their window proclaiming: "We make the stone countertops in Wisconsin."

            Finally, the third shop put a sign in their window saying: "We make the best stone countertops on the block."

Entrepreneur magazine defines Unique Selling Proposition as The factor or consideration presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition. Your USP is the reason your customer buys from you and not your competition.

            You need to find a unique selling proposition that gives your prospects a reason to buy from you. It is best if your competition cannot easily or quickly duplicate your USP.

Without a USP the prospect can only make their decision based on price.

            To develop your USP you need to understand what you do that is different than your competition. 

If you have a number of different kinds of competition you may need to develop several different USPs to deal with each of the different types.

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Source: Is Your Boss Worse Than Cigarettes? 

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Researchers from the Harvard Business School and Stanford University meta-analyzed the results of more than 200 studies to better understand the effects of stress in the workplace. They found that worrying about losing your job makes you 50% more likely to experience poor health and that having an overly demanding job makes you 35% more likely to have a physician-diagnosed illness.

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Identify (Profile) Your Best Customers

            Make a list of your best customers.  What made them good customers? Where do they live? What age group are they in? Where do they hang out?

            If you can identify your best customers and create a profile then you can go out and look for customers just like them.

            If you have several great customers from a particular area, a particular size home, or a particular age home then you may be able to look in those same areas for new great customers.

            For example if there is a nearby town that has homes that are twenty to thirty years old and are due for remodeling and upgrades it is better place to look than a subdivision only a year old where everything is new.

            The reverse is also true. You do not need to red line which means refuse to work in certain areas but if there is a town where unemployment is very high and property values are falling it might not be the place to prospect. If you do get a prospect make sure they can afford to pay you.

           

            Some things to look for:

·       Age group

·       Income range

·       Age of home

·       Value of home

·       How long the prospect has owned the home.

·       Rising or sinking home values in area

·       Retired

·       Marital status

·       Type of employment

·       Club membership

·       Age of children - grade in school

            Once you understand what kind of customer is best for you look for that customer and tailor your product to serve that profile. 

            You can also develop profiles for customers that are a problem for you. When we were building homes we used to hate lawyers because it took longer to do the contract than build the home.