AMA - Differentiated Digging

Today is a part 2 response to last Friday’s AMA episode.

Last Friday Joseph from Boulder Colorado asked a question about systems and software for his company that almost accidentally got into the excavation business. For a complete context, you may want to listen to that episode first before listening to this one.

I was thinking some more about your question related to how you got into the excavation business. This episode is a bonus. It’s not answering your question at all, but is the result of thinking about how a simple business like excavation could become a sought after service, rather than just a low value subcontract.

Joseph, if you want to be in the excavation business, I would recommend that you consider having a differentiated offering. There is a concept in business called intentional congruence. Intentional congruence means offering products and services that are clearly distinct, but actually go together. It’s like cereal and milk, hamburgers and buns, popcorn and butter.

People who do excavation are merely digging holes. Digging holes is a commodity. Commodities are interchangeable and the winning bid always goes to the lowest bidder. That’s the preverbal race to the bottom. You calculate the machine time and multiply by the hourly rate.

But you want your offering to be differentiated in the market.

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Host: Victor Menasce

email: podcast@victorjm.com