What is your organization’s biggest source of competitive advantage?

Our reader poll today asks: What is your organization’s biggest source of competitive advantage?

• Our people — we have the best team out there 49.54%
• Our product/service — no other products/services come close 21.97%
• Our prices — you can’t beat our deals 5.61%
• Our placement — we own the market we’re in 6.54%
• Our promotion — we’re amazing marketers and salespeople 0.46%
• Something else 7.47%
• We don’t have a competitive advantage 8.41%

People are our edge. Half of you reported that your people are what give you your competitive advantage in the market. So ask yourself – if that’s the case, are you doing everything you can to develop and retain them? Do they have the tools and resources to get their work done to compete effectively or are there processes and gaps in your organization that make things harder for them? Are your compensation decisions focused on keeping them happy or do you focus more on “hitting your numbers” even if it comes at the expense of your team members’ happiness and satisfaction? The mantra of “people are our most important asset” gets trotted out frequently. Spend some time asking yourself if you’re living up to that belief. If not, make the required changes or face losing your competitive advantage to an organization that backs this saying with actions.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.