Competitive Differentiation and your Business (part 1).

“No company wants to be that me-too seller, and no one wants to buy from a me-too company”

Think about your best buying experiences, like in your favourite restaurant for example, they didn’t just have superior meals (products), they offer a completely differentiated customer experience, which probably left you feeling special or great, and keen to go back for that experience once more.

As a seller, a business participating in the world of commerce might think that competitive differentiation comes from its products with their bells and whistles, but the reality is that a lot of that competitive differentiation comes from the actual business itself.

Truly competitively differentiated businesses standout as something really valuable and sets themselves apart from businesses that are just commodities.

Now if you think about why your customers buy from you, again, with a thorough in-depth analysis you’ll realise it’s more than just because of the product, but a lot of it has to do with how your customers experience you and your organisation/business. The good thing is that a large part of how customers experience you is, for all intent and purposes, completely within your control.

Businesses that treat improving their own competitive differentiation as an imperative tend to attract and win more clients, more business and avoid cutting their prices in order to make a sale.

On the other hand businesses without competitive differentiation, businesses that are just like any other business (commodities), tend to experience much longer sales cycles, and deals always come down to that bottom price.

[Read part 2 for continuation]