Years ago, I wrote an article encouraging business owners to confront their options to do or not do business with China and every other low cost producer.  Now, I encourage every owner to rethink the following.  If you are a small business who cannot be the low cost provider, what can you do to leverage the quality, safety, and reliability of your products to win back accounts, higher margins and customer loyalty?  For every purchasing agent who loves buying products at the lowest cost, there is an insecure employee hiding inside worried that they will get exposed and fired for buying low cost goods that don’t work or worse are unsafe.

There is no time like the present to beef up your product’s safety, reliability, and performance.  How can you sell FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) to overcome the very pricing concerns you have fallen victim to in the past?   What better time than now to promote the upside of doing business with your company and the downside of taking chances with vendors’ products whose necks your customers cannot choke across an acean.  Try it out.  Even if you don’t move mountains, you can feel really good about standing tall for your value.  And if you need to look at all all the places you can add value, please take at my concept of Best and Highest Use and think about all the ways you and your business really are superior!  There really is no time like the present!

Last month when I spoke to the Carolinas Association of Advertising and Marketing Professionals, a young woman asked a great question. 

She wanted to know:

“Does best and highest use refer to my own or to my staff’s best and highest use?”  Is this about me personally or about my company?

Unfortunately we were out of time.  I promised I would go deeper into that question here on the blog. 

Best and highest use is what both you and your firm like doing, are good at doing and your market has valued you both for doing.

As a business owner it’s crucial to your success that you focus on where you can make the biggest impact. Do not scatter yourself in a million directions, because then you go nowhere.   For example, [explain and elaborate ….].

“Best and Highest Use” also can refer to using your staff resources wisely. That may mean outsourcing your Web design instead of trying to handle it internally. [explain and elaborate ….].

How about you?  What have you stopped doing or outsourced, so that you could concentrate on “the best and highest use” in your business?  Continue the discussion by leaving a comment below and sharing your ideas.