It’s interesting when it happens, if a little frustrating. You experience something nothing short of brilliant. You use a product that blows your mind. You have dinner out and can’t quite work out why that restaurant just has it sussed. You leave a party and feel elated but can’t quite work out why?

Often, in the most enlightening of experiences we can’t explain what makes a product or company different. It’s just there! Discreet, unassuming, quiet but very there.

Take my Apple. I love it. We are joined at the hip. I would never go back to the ‘dark side’ yet I can’t really explain why that is so. There are obvious things that any Apple user would tell you. It does exactly the same thing as the rest of the competition, but there really is just something there, that’s hard to explain.

It’s the same in Angela’s restaurant in Exeter in the UK. Everyone who I know has been says the same thing. Food’s great, service is fabulous, just what you would expect from a fantastic restaurant but, its better than that, loads better. It surpasses any experience you would get in a restaurant in a couple hundred miles but you really can’t put your finger on it….perhaps that’s the point!

The control in a small business will begin to blur. No longer will it the one man/woman show it used to be. One week it will be in one person’s hands, the next another, depending on their specialism and the project. The owner co-ordinating and facilitating this rather than directing it.

As a result we will need to consider our human resource strategies in some detail. Retention will be a fundamental issue. An interesting challenge as many of us have very itchy feet. Strategies based on mutual respect, feeling valued, recognised, rewarded and a share in the business will need to be designed in to ensure our people remain satisfied with us and not someone else.

Our relationship with these people will need to be more significant, intense and trustworthy. Employees are already seeking out companies who they feel are sincere and genuine. Trust will be at the centre of every business owner’s attention. 

If our peoples imagination and delivery of product/service is the only differentiating factor, we better get going on how we are going to keep our competitive advantage.

The costs involved in being ahead of the game have always been considered a hindrance, a lame excuse for avoiding the risk. Now, however, the money required is a lot less, or is it that the risk is?

Being that one-step ahead, in the past, has been about your product. Is it the latest? Has it got more widgets than the competition? Is it using the most sophisticated technology? A lot of small businesses have tried to compete by investing in that product development, insistent that having their own product is crucial to adding value to the business and sustained success.

That might still be the case. But products move that fast now. They change so quickly that its hard for a small business to keep up, never mind have the resources to pump thousands (and the rest) into products that could be defunct in a couple of years or, someone else has been developing with a budget double the size of yours.

It’s not about ignoring or pulling out of product development; it’s about working collaboratively and in partnership with other people in your game. You can share the cost, share the resource and share the risk. Or, on another note, let some other person develop the product and you concentrate on customer acquisition and retention. Your businesses worth is just as much about your customer portfolio as it is about your product nowadays.

Products come and go, so do customers but there worth a hell of a lot more than they used to be and customer experience costs a hell of a lot less than product development. Today, doing it on your own can be like shooting yourself in the foot.