Kevin Maney – Category Design – The Key to Competitive Advantage
SEASON: 3 EPISODE: 10
Episode Overview:
Most businesses just try to be better than their competitors, constantly fighting for every bit of marketshare.
If you are looking to stand out from the competition and authentically define, develop, and ultimately dominate a new category of business, you’ll need to answer the questions, “What’s the problem you solve?”, “What solution must exist?”, and “Why are you that solution?”
So if you are looking to dominate your market, then you are going to enjoy my conversation with bestselling author and award-winning columnist, Kevin Maney.
Guest Bio:
Kevin Maney is co-author of Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets and has been a bestselling author and award-winning columnist writing about technology for three decades which allows Kevin to bring broad and deep context to Category Design conversations.
Kevin co-authored his most recent book Intended Consequences. He also authored The Two-Second Advantage (a 2011 New York Times best seller), Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don’t, and The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM.
Kevin has written for Newsweek, Fortune, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Conde Nast Portfolio, The New York Times and USA Today. Kevin has also appeared frequently on television and radio, including CNN, CBS Sunday Morning and NPR.
Resource Links:
- Website: https://www.categorydesignadvisors.com/the-experts/
- Product Link: https://www.categorydesignadvisors.com/resources/
Insight Gold Timestamps:
02:39 One of the great accidental career moves of all time
04:04 All of those interviews and all that time with these companies
06:11 Why would you not want to do everything you could
09:09 Category and category design
11:44 It’s kind of an inside-out look at strategy
12:42 Instead of calling it a sports bar, she calls it The Sports Bra
14:43 Businesses operate their businesses for their convenience
16:13 They think about the problem to solve first
17:53 Now that you understand that that’s a problem, I have a solution for you
22:12 Deep sales
23:54 If you’re in a space with a clear category winner….
26:48 Can both strategies work at the same time?
28:33 What’s the first step in the category design consultation process?
34:04 What’s the enemy of the innovation?
35:36 So many CEOs fail at telling people why they need what they’re making
37:19 Eat your lunch before the competition does
39:42 The book is called Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets
Connect Socially:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/categorydesign/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CategoryDesign
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cd_advisors
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/categorydesign/
Email: kevin@categorydesignadvisors.com
Sponsors:
Rainmaker Digital Solutions: https://www.rainmakerdigitalsolutions.com/
Resources: https://becomingpreferred-podcast.com/resources/
Next Episode: Grow your Business Without Burning Out with Grant Muller!
About the Host, Michael
Michael Vickers inspires enduring success, redefining the possible for today’s sales professionals, leaders, and managers. Whatever the sales or business opportunity, Michael will greatly enhance your odds of success. Every person who has an idea to promote, an employee to motivate, or a deal to negotiate, will attain a new level of success after an event with Michael.
Michael is also the best-selling author of Becoming Preferred: How to Outsell Your Competition, and Dance of the Rainmaker: Creating Authentic Differentiation in Today's Competitive Marketplace, where he shares his secrets to achieving the very highest level of sales mastery.
Whatever the result you’re striving for, if it involves influencing others or achieving success through others, Michael will build your confidence and accelerate your performance.
Michael is the Executive Director of Summit Learning Systems, a company that offers customized in-house training programs to many of today’s leading companies. He teaches thousands of business professionals throughout North America the skills required to achieve optimum performance.