Sun Tzu used two analogies to emphasize the importance of two aspects and they are the moment and the moment. With momentum, even water that is not solidly shaped is capable of pushing through large rocks, and with good timing the eagle was able to break through the body of the prey without much effort. As seen below, or chapter five of Sun Tzu Art of War.
When the torrential water throws stones pushing boulders, it is by the force of its momentum. When the fierce blow of an eagle, breaks the body of its prey, it is at the moment of the blow. Therefore, the forces and momentum of the war expert are so overwhelming and fierce and his moment of confrontation is precise and swift.
IMPULSE
So where and how can we harness the momentum in business? One area where we can build on the momentum is advertising. When you enter a new market, the first and foremost thing to do is set up your marketing campaign correctly. Your marketing campaign must gain momentum, having constant and continuous exposure of your products and brand to new consumers. Repetition helps consumers better remember your brand and product. The ways to make consumers remember your products and brands are logos, jingles, slogans, and many more. Many consumers prefer the senses to learn and absorb things. Logos would appeal to people who are more visual in learning, jingles and slogans would appeal more to people who are more auditory. This is why most marketing campaigns have both. For example, NIKE has “JUST DO IT”, HSBC has “The World’s Local Bank” and many more.
Therefore, repetition would create momentum for your move into a new market. With this momentum, you can be noticed in the new market and consumers, who are currently disappointed with what is currently offered in the market, would be willing to try your products or services. Keep in mind that you need to do a little research on the competitors operating in the new markets you are moving into. You have to know if you are adding a value proposition to the new market. If what you sell is the same, be it the sales process and the products, it is unlikely that you will be able to maintain the market share that you initially snatched from your competitors.
MOMENT
So what about time? Is time important in business? In an article published in the Business Times, Singapore (February 23, 2005), many specialty restaurants have to close shortly after opening. This could be partly attributed to the poor timing of restaurant openings. They were mostly opened during bad economic times. As you can see, the bad time can kill, but the good time can make you prosper. We have seen that in investing, if we are able to synchronize well our buying and selling of shares, we would obtain the maximum amount of benefits, but this is difficult. In business, timing of entering a new market is also important, for example, when entering a new market when consumers are beginning to change tastes or in bad economic times, you may not be able to get a lot of sales to sustain. your business.
But it should be noted here that these are good times and bad times to execute business decisions. Bad economic times, while resulting in lower sales, also mean lower expansion costs. SEMBAWANG MUSIC, a Singapore-listed company expanded its branches during the financial crisis because it was only during that time that the six locations they wanted were cheap and Singapore’s currency held steady, while regional currencies plummeted, causing them to allowed to import a large amount of money. Low-priced music CDs. (The Sunday Times, March 27, 2005, page 19). To put it in another perspective, for every time, there is right and wrong to do.
So how can we get the correct timing? There are two aspects, one is knowledge and the other is experience. Knowledge allows us to measure a range of time when opportunities are about to happen, as such, we can prepare to seize the opportunity. Now, we can get relevant insights on our own, but to be able to capture time correctly, it would largely depend on experience and attitude. Because time is like shooting an arrow, you can have knowledge of the wind direction, the strength of the bow, the angle to shoot at and many more, but when it comes to practice, which is to release the arrow, it takes experience. As the common phrase goes, “Practice makes perfect”, it never says “Knowledge makes perfect.”