By Tom Trush
What if working like crazy to beat the competition did exactly the opposite -- made you mediocre and more like the competition?
Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon poses this thought on the back cover of her book, Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd.
The question is worthy of attention, especially in today's business world where "we're different" claims are as common as coffee at Starbucks. After all, difference isn't a characteristic you can just talk about ... you must prove it.
But how can you? How do you get prospects to differentiate your offerings from your competitors'?
Well, if you're in an industry where your service (or product) isn't part of a regular shopping experience and prospects have many options, you have a tough task.
Here's a quick example that explains why ...
Until about age 13, I collected baseball cards. My dad lived behind a shopping mall. So my twin brother and I would spend our allowances on Topps wax packs at the nearby drug store.
Every year we created checklists so we could match our new cards with what we needed to create a complete set. The cards were then organized in albums and boxes.
We would also read Beckett Baseball Card Monthly like a minister studies the Bible. That way we always knew what our cards were worth (which was helpful when trading with friends).
In many cases, we could rattle off a card's value by just giving it a quick glance.
But while we understood what differences made baseball cards valuable, our parents had no clue and wondered why we kept wasting our money. They saw each card as the same -- a rectangular piece of stiff paper with a picture on the front and statistics on the back.
Prospects have similar reactions when shopping for a new service or product As Moon describes in her book, "Where a connoisseur sees the differences, a novice sees the similarities."
When you're familiar with an industry, you can deconstruct your decisions. You make choices based on factors that you know are important.
But when you're unfamiliar with an industry, you don't have this luxury. You don't know the differentiating factors. And, as a result, most offerings look the same.
This is one reason why creating educational content for your prospects is so critical to an effective marketing strategy. Remember, most prospects prefer information -- not instant sales pitches.
When you only push services and showcase your company, you become just another fish in a sea of sameness.
Tom Trush is available at https://www.writewaysolutions.com.
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© Trey Ryder
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