ALEXANDRIA, Va. – On this week’s episode of Convenience Matters, “Building Your Own Box to Beat Your Competition—Part 2,” NACS hosts Jeff Lenard and Carolyn Schnare continue their conversation with Steve Miller, who wrote Uncopyable: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition.

With everyone focused on offering customers convenience, the idea of convenience isn’t as important today as it was in the past. This means convenience retailers need to answer the question as to why a customer should come into their store. “We should be very cognizant of who our target customers are,” Miller said.

He added that he likes to tell businesses to think about hunting moose in a forest to illustrate that idea. “The point is that you’re not going to go [into the forest] with a fishing rod [to hunt moose].” These days, Miller views experience as what differentiates, and urges convenience stores to think about “what kind of moose bait” they can offer to bring in their target customers.

Miller gave as another example how one McDonald’s restaurant came up with the drive-thru restaurant—by noticing how the drive-up window at a local bank could be replicated at its restaurant. “That’s a good example of where you get ideas,” he said. “I say build your own box with your own rules of competition.”

For businesses and exhibitors, Miller recommended not copying what competitors are doing. Instead, look “outside and study aliens in other events [or industries] … and steal those ideas. I call it ‘stealing genius.’”

You can hear Miller speak in person at this year’s NACS Show in Las Vegas. The morning of Tuesday, October 9, he will speak in a strategy session, “The Evolving Competition Within Convenience,” as well as a marketing session, “Getting Customers Into Your Store.” Explore the full educational program for the NACS Show and register today.

Each week a new Convenience Matters episode is released. The podcast can be downloaded on iTunes, Google Play and other podcast apps, and at www.conveniencematters.com. Episodes have been downloaded by listeners more than 50,000 times in more than 80 countries.