Jack Trout – It’s better to be first than it is to be better

16. 08. 2019

People who are interested in management and marketing know about Jack Trout. He is an American marketer and founder and a president of consultation company “Trout & Partners”.

Jack is an author of the world’s bestseller “Marketing warfare”. This book introduces the best tactics and perspectives in marketing history. This book shows 4 types of strategies: defensive, offensive, flanking, guerilla. The book includes successful marketing cases and mistakes of the last 3 decades with new and deep analyses and tips.

While working Jack Trout dared to question famous ideas of his time. He didn’t hesitate to make fun of grounds of management and marketing. Once he stated that the main foes of business were people working on wall street with a consultant army, who were trying to earn money on the price of businesses. This statement showed to potential customers that he was different from others.

Jack Trout always stood out from others with his different opinions.

Here are some of them:

Success leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure. Success and failure are twin brothers. Success is relaxing.
The strategy of a newcomer to the market should be very different from the strategy of a leader. Therefore, strategies can never be copied.
The biggest problem for business people is greed. Basically, all the bad deeds are committed because of greed, when people try to increase their income by any means.
Marketing is a movie in which the main character is a product.
People suffer the same disease as the goods: they want to please everyone, without exception.
Companies that do not find their difference from others will certainly die. Too high competition. To survive, you need to find a niche where you will be a leader.
If the product does not have a point of difference, you only have to offer a low price.
Winning generals usually build war plans that will work no matter what the enemy does. This is the essence of a good strategy.
It is more important to be first than just the best. If you have a small company, then sometimes it is simply impossible to compete with the market leader in either price or quality. The solution may be to create a product that no one has released before you.
Trying harder than others - rarely leads to success. Trying smarter than others is the right way.
Today, when the company stumbles, she immediately hears the breath of competitors behind her back, because in modern business they do not walk, but run. To recover lost business, the company has to wait for others to stumble, and then try to figure out how to use this situation.
It’s better to be first than it is to be better
It is much easier to penetrate consciousness first than later try to convince everyone that your product is better than the one who did it.