The most expensive words in business: we’ve always done it this way
Every industry has practices that survive because nobody has asked why they exist.
3 minute read
Most category conventions were decisions once. Somebody weighed the options, picked one, and the reasons got lost while the practice stayed. Twenty years later it is simply how things are done.
That is where the openings are. If every competitor prices the same way, packages the same way, sells through the same channel and says roughly the same thing, then a whole set of possibilities is sitting unclaimed in plain sight.
The useful exercise is to write down what everyone in your category believes and then ask, for each line, whether it is a law or a habit. Laws are rare. Regulation is a law. Physics is a law. Almost everything else on the list is a habit.
Habits are worth attacking because attacking them is cheap. You do not need a better product to sell on a different unit. You do not need more budget to reach an audience nobody else is talking to.
The risk is real and it cuts both ways. Some conventions exist because the alternatives were tried and failed. Find out which before you bet on one.
But the default position, that the way it is done is the way it should be done, is the most expensive assumption most companies carry. It costs nothing to hold and it quietly removes every option that would have worked.
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