Oren Harari keynoted a conference that I attended last week. He talked about the fact that most businesses (and definitely a lot of businesses in our industry) live in “commodity hell”…
his words, not mine. When we do something different to differentiate ourselves from our competition, within a few months our competition has discovered our differentiator and has started to copy it. Differentiation gone. Back to “no difference” in the customer’s mind.
Customer satisfaction is a commodity response to a commodity industry. You need to “lead your customer to an impossible place.” The words, “Wow, dazzle, thrill, delight” should be answers to your customers’ experience with your company.
So, how do you do it when information about our companies, our competitors, and sometimes our customers is available to anyone who knows how to use the Internet search engines? According to Dr. Harari, our Achilles Heel is sticking to what generated profits in the past. Our challenge in the copycat economy is to keep ahead of the imitators who are definitely watching us.
What can you do to dominate an industry? You don't have to be the biggest. In fact, Dr. Harari said that the biggest generally are the slowest to adapt. They want to be more like the small and mid-size businesses.
So what can you do that’s different, can be done at a competitive price and will wow a customer? Look at industries that you are not in. See what they are doing. Talk with your customers. Ask them, "What keeps you up at night?" You'll get ideas of things you can do to dominate your industry.
Make a long term commitment to continually stay in touch with your customers. If you find an article or a white paper with information that will help them…send it to your customers. Most will appreciate your thinking of them.
We can stay in the pack, grumbling about prices, competition and profits. Or we can differentiate, get noticed by our customers who appreciate and will pay for the value we
provide. This will generate more revenues and profits and a lot less grumbling. The choice is yours.
Note: Oren Harari’s book, “Break from the Pack: How to Compete in a Copycat Economy,” is available at all bookstores.