In the news
June 04, 2020Florida Highway Patrol Inducts Jaynie L Smith
Ft. Lauderdale, FL, June 3, 2014 – Jaynie L. Smith is the newest inductee into the Florida Highway Patrol Advisory Council. Smith is the author of Creating Competitive Advantage and Relevant Selling, the CEO of Smart Advantage, Inc., and an internationally recognized keynote speaker.
The Florida Highway Patrol Advisory Council is an organization comprised of business, professional, and community leaders throughout the state. Members of the Advisory Council provide assistance to the Director of the Florida Highway Patrol by offering input regarding the performance of the Patrol and the quality of service provided to the public.
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AchieveHERs Signature Event on Nov 6 Highlights Surge of Female Entrepreneurs Boosts Business in Clearwater
Clearwater is mirroring the national surge of female entrepreneurs, which shows that one of every ten US women is now starting or running a new business. (1)
Jayme MacCullough is a local example. After spending more than a decade as part owner of the family business, MacCullough – a mother of five — is now launching her own company in the Clearwater area.
“I want to be available to my boys when they need me. Being a small business owner is really key to that flexibility: scheduling my own hours, ordering my own day, building my own network. Women have traditionally had to juggle so many things, so we’re very focused.” (more…)
8 Things Every CEO Must Know
Louis Bedigian, staff writer of Benzinga, reports on 8 Things Every CEO Must Know by interviewing Jaynie Smith, CEO of Smart Advantage and best selling author of “Creating Competitive Advantage” and “Relevant Selling.”
Some CEOs are praised for the work they accomplish.
Others are thrown out for disappointing the Board.
One of the more notable CEO shakeups of 2013 involved Ron Johnson, the former Apple Store executive who left Cupertino to run J.C. Penney.
According to Time, there were five “big mistakes” that led to his removal at J.C. Penney.
He misread what shoppers want.
He didn’t test ideas in advance.
He alienated core customers.
He misread the brand.
He didn’t like or respect the company.
If Johnson had spoken to CEO consultant Jaynie L. Smith last year, he might have been able to avoid some of these mistakes.
Smith is the CEO of Smart Advantage, a marketing and management consultancy that focuses on identifying a company’s competitive advantage. She is also the co-author of Creating Competitive Advantage and Relevant Selling.
Click through the slideshow to see her eight tips that every CEO must know.
March 01, 2013PGA Magazine: Marketing Golf Facilities: The PGA Professional’s Role
Smart Advantage CEO Jaynie L. Smith lists the following marketing “musts” that companies across a spectrum of industries, including golf, have to do in order to be successful:
1. Base your plan on unbiased and accurate feedback. Smith says many small businesses, including golf facilities, fall prey to thinking they know their customers better than they do. That includes basing marketing plans on anecdotal feedback from a small group of satisfied customers instead of gathering information from a variety of customers and non-customers.
2. Have everyone on the same page. Relevant marketing depends on internal agreement. It’s difficult to deliver a consistent message or product when different employees or departments don’t share a common vision. Create a mission statement and marketing plan, so your staff members are all waving the same flag.
3. Have a different plan for potential customers than you do for existing customers. Prospects make decisions for different reasons than people who are already customers. Market your facility differently to new golfers or potential new members than you do to avid golfers or existing members.
4. Treat different target markets differently. Just as prospects and existing customers need distinct messages, so do different target markets. Your message needs to be different when you’re marketing to a group of working women vs. a group of retired men, for example.
5. Base investments on what your customer values, not what you value. Again, this is where research into customer opinion is key. A clubhouse renovation may not be a good investment if what your golfers really want is a pool for family activities.
6. Fill operational gaps. What are you not offering that your customers value? Providing daycare may get more young women on the course, or a short game practice area may bring avid golfers out more often.
7. Think about tomorrow more than you think about today. Much of golf marketing is reactive to a month of bad weather or a short-term downturn in memberships. Having a marketing plan will help you keep sight of long-term goals for the bottom line and the identity of your facility.
Entrepreneur Magazine, Christopher Hann. Interview Topic: Your Wish is My Command
Q: How can you determine exactly what it is your customers want?
A: This sounds like a no-brainer, right? Wrong. You’d be surprised to learn how many entrepreneurs lurch around, oblivious to their customers’ deepest desires. How is this possible? Easy. The entrepreneurs forget to ask. Or they ask the wrong questions. Or they rely on their sales force to enlighten them, and the sales force asks the wrong questions. That’s where Jaynie L. Smith comes in.
PGA Magazine: Meeting of Merchandising Minds
November 23, 2012New York Times: Promoting Made in U.S.A., but Very Carefully
BRANDS reviving the “Made in the U.S.A.” slogan to attract buyers for American-produced goods are relying less on patriotism and more on data that shows consumers are willing to pay a premium for better quality, quicker availability and product safety.
But many companies are stepping gingerly, avoiding sweeping claims and spelling out what “Made in the U.S.A.” means for their products. Consumers are more shrewd about how few consumer goods actually are made in the United States, leaving companies less wiggle room about the origin of products.
The Whirlpool Corporation, for example, specified in full-page print advertisements this year that 80 percent of its appliances “sold in the U.S. come from our U.S. factories.” Despite its deep American roots, the 101-year-old company — which makes Maytag, Amana, KitchenAid and Jenn-Air products — has, like other corporate giants, moved some manufacturing abroad.
July 11, 2012WholeFoods Magazine: Do Businesses Know What Their Customers Want?
Research shows that 90% of businesses do not know what their customers want. In a world burdened with financial difficulties, American stores need to shape up. According to a four-year study conducted by the market intelligence firm, BIGresearch, most customers will put value and service ahead of price. That’s right. Even though your store may be just a tad more expensive than the one next door, if yours provides quality assistance for consumers, they will choose you over the lower-priced competition.
“When researchers asked customers how far they’d be willing to drive for excellent service, 80 percent said they’d travel four or more miles, and nearly half said they would drive ten miles or more for the right combination of price, quality and customer service,” said Scott Gross, author of When Customers Talk.
In addition, Jaynie L. Smith, CEO of Smart Advantage, Inc. and author of Relevant Selling, added that “the business who becomes relevant by addressing what customers really value at any given time will be the first ones out of the recession.”
Here are five easy tips to help adjust your sales and marketing message to become more attractive to consumers.
1. Pay attention to “how” things are sold, not “what” is sold. In a world of rapid technological advancements, it is hard for the more traditional stores to compete. After all, why would a customer purchase what they need at your store when they can do so at their convenience, either online or at a closer location? That is where the “how” comes in. Every place will be selling the same “what,” but it is up to you to differentiate your business and products from all the others. Smith’s mantra is, “If you don’t value what you bring to the costumer, they won’t value it either.” Make sure to maintain your company’s reputation on matters such as consistency, customer service or quality.
September 27, 20115 Companies That Know Why They’re Great
In her book, Creating Competitive Advantage, author Jaynie Smith writes: “In my research with middle-market companies, I found only two CEOs out of 1,000 who could clearly name their companies’ competitive advantages. The other 99.8 percent could offer only vague, imprecise generalities.”
This is bad news because, as Smith notes, “Ignoring [competitive advantages] can be an expensive and even fatal mistake.”
If you’re a CEO running a company — whether it’s a small start-up or a major Fortune 500 giant — your success will ultimately boil down to creating and sustaining a competitive advantage that allows you to consistently outpace your competitors. But simply having a competitive advantage may not be terribly useful to you if you don’t know what your competitive advantage is and how to make the most of it.
But it’s not just CEOs who should be laser-focused on competitive advantage. Some of the most successful long-term investors are those who put emphasis on finding companies with strong competitive moats. Don’t take it from me. I recently highlighted the fact that Warren Buffett has said that competitive advantage is “the key to investing.”
Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner has a yen for competitive advantage as well, which has helped him pick out market-crushing companies like Amazon.com for the Motley Fool Stock Advisor service early on.
You know when they know
As Foolish investors, we’re ready to rock and roll when it comes to digging in and doing research. However, if we’re on the same page as Jaynie Smith, then the best companies are those where we don’t have to work very hard to figure out what they do best. Why’s that? Because companies that know why they’re great can find a way to tell us in a clear, concise, obvious way.
Let’s take a closer look at a few companies that do that well.
Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO )
When it comes to competitive advantage, Coca-Cola has it in spades. To be sure, it has tough competitors like PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP ) and, to a lesser extent, Dr Pepper Snapple, but Coke isn’t going to get dethroned by any ol’ jabroni with a pile of cash and a handful of beverage recipes.
PROFIT Magazine interviews Jaynie for Business Coach Podcast Series
May 12, 2010 – Fort Lauderdale, Florida – Jaynie L. Smith, author of best-selling book Creating Competitive Advantage (Doubleday), was invited to interview with Canadian business publication PROFIT Magazine. Jaynie has previously been featured in PROFIT magazine in November 2008, within the article titled “The Biggest Lie in Business.”
Ian Portsmouth, the Editor and Associate Publisher, interviewed Ms. Smith for his Business Coach Podcast Series. The interview went live to listeners on May 11, 2010. The podcast is dedicated to discuss issues and opportunities facing Canada’s small businesses.
It’s 15 minutes and delves into how businesses can address some of their issues by answering “What are your competitive advantages?” correctly. Smith, who specializes in the topic ofcompetitive advantage, will briefly guide businesses on how to truly answer this question.
Commonly known as a differentiator, or a unique selling point, competitive advantages have not been clearly defined by thousands of CEOs whom Smith has questioned within her 20 years of consulting experience. Portsmouth and Smith’s discussion will focus on the true definition of a competitive advantage, as well as provide listeners with real and hypothetical examples so they can then apply it to their own business.
Some questions that will be covered include: 1) Why intelligent business owners and executives believe their company has a competitive advantage even when it doesn’t; 2) How a company should go about determining its competitive advantage; and 3) How companies have competitive advantages, yet don’t know about them.
As the author of Creating Competitive Advantage, a publication praised by CEOs around the world, Jaynie L. Smith helps organizations uncover and capitalize on the unique traits that set them apart from other competitors in their industry. A universally tried-and-true handbook,Creating Competitive Advantage is in its tenth printing, with publishing rights sold to publishers in five different countries.