Looking for an extra edge? The finishing business is like a house of cards—an achievement of delicate balance in spite of facing an array of factors stacked against you. Change the smallest thing and you risk the calamity of total failure. Yet conversely, the smallest incremental competitive difference can yield a huge and positive impact on your outcomes. In fact, when you’re challenged, change may be the last thing you need. You want improvement not disruption. And you want to win, but you don’t need to kill your opponent in the process. One way to achieve desired results is by setting assumptions aside and focusing on small, seemingly insignificant, differences in your product and services. Just remember, wholesale changes are risky when all you need is that extra edge.
Consistency is outmoded
In the finishing business the goal is to create a desired result and then duplicate that same result consistently over time. Consistency is what our customers pay us for, so it’s expected. It’s a mode you must have to operate, not one to be striving for. As such, we also have to be competitive, so we strive to make a difference with the service and the products we deliver. In this sense it’s perfectly acceptable to be inconsistent and different. To be competitive we have to set our products and services apart; be more efficient and more profitable. The more we can wow our customers with performance; impress them with the qualities we can build into our process or improve our products, the better. It’s our business to strive for consistency but value will lie in that extra degree of difference.
Results always make a difference
“Difference” is synonymous with result. In math for example, difference is the result of subtracting one number from another. Regardless the size of the difference—it’s always a result. In that sense, when you’re looking for small differences, you’re always moving forward, if not for the gains, for the information so you may improve it more the next time. Besides leveraging incremental differences offer a control comparison for checking or verifying the results. When so many variables are at play this is a much less riskier route to ply. So look for small differences in what you do and the results will take care of themselves.
3 Fundamental ways to make a difference
Any fine finishing business is built upon the choice they make every day. They know how to achieve results in 3 distinct ways:
- Finishers who demand competitive results create the difference by specifying the cleaners, primers, finishes and top coats specific for each job,
- Finishers earn the difference with customers for their tenacity to keep their lines moving, trouble free and on schedule,
- And successful finishers acquire any number of more complex competitive differences—such as environmental compliance solutions and adhesion promoters—from coatings and solutions experts like Accessa.
The upshot
What really matters when we think of creating differences is a result we can show. If you want to optimize an OEM coatings system you’re definitely looking for obvious results over the long haul. If your coatings partner can minimize lead times you could change your focus from inventory to something more productive. Sometimes perhaps it’s all in how you intend to make a difference.
Finally, I hope you find it comforting to know “difference” doesn’t mean change. You may not have to change what you’re doing to make a real difference. As successful finishers show, some differences are earned, some are purchased, and others created. But results are due any finishing business that looks for, and accepts, small, continuous, incremental differences. Those are businesses, favored by their customers, who are focused on results.
The challenge will be the assumptions
Nothing kills ideas intended to make a real difference faster than the human assumption. But think of an innovation or a perfect solution you’ve admired and I will show you an idea someone had the balls to care about and champion. Someone willing to make an end run around the committee decision process, the top-down implementation plan and purchasing.
Differences that matter will require someone to care enough to carry the ball to the finish. But you will have to go up against all the educated assumptions in order to influence others so they may see it for themselves. Nothing can be done alone.
Contact us at 317-879-2055 for help discovering the difference that matters to your finishing business.