Testimonials from customers or supply-chain partners can serve as powerful differentiators. Building your brand on testimonials means you stand out from your competitors in customer loyalty and customer delight. Doing business with you makes people happy, or solves a big problem, or gives them new opportunities–or all of the above and more. And whatever product […]
If you have what Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan calls a “Unique Process,” you are way ahead of your competition in differentiation. Your brand promise IS that you will deliver the outcomes that your process inevitably produces. The illustration to your left is a replica of The Whale Hunters Process™. It consists of three stages–Scout, Hunt, and […]
I’ve been working on a series of blog posts about ways to differentiate from your competitors, focused on 31 ways that you might choose to define brand promise. One way is to highlight your method of getting the results your customers want. I don’t mean process (I’ll talk about that next) but rather the way you […]
A new report from CSO Insights is their This research study–19th in CSO’s series–looked at more than 100 metrics and garnered responses from 1200 companies. Essentially, this piece is a summary of the study, with more detailed information on various metrics available through CSO Insights–industry specific responses, for example. What always strikes me about the […]
I’m happy to recommend a new book by my friend and colleague Nancy Bleeke–all about how to have “collaborative conversations” with your prospective customers. As you know, Whale Hunting is all about collaboration, and the “Hunt” stage is very focused on the nature of the conversation–what we’ve called Progressive Discovery and Progressive Disclosure. This book […]
Is timeliness an important part of your service? A good way for small companies to differentiate is by using their agility and flexibility to deliver goods and services faster than their competitors do. The more complex your service, the more a timely delivery may be a great selling point Of course, you have to be […]
Focusing on the outcomes of your work for customers can promote a clear differentiation from competitors. All buyers are interested in the end result–what will it look like/feel like/be like when you are done? This image (known as a 3D Knowledge Model) represents a future state where a number of disparate entities are aligned around […]
Everyone’s heard of a “niche” market as one way to differentiate your company from others. Perhaps you sell business-to-business, and you sell only to schools, or to salespeople, or to entrepreneurs, or to HR Directors, or to manufacturers. Or you sell to consumers, perhaps to men, or to teens, or to lawyers or gardeners.You might […]
A few days ago we had an air conditioning company come to the house for a seasonal check-up of our system. The guy who came out was polite and seemed knowledgeable and thorough, and after his inspection he told us about the few things that should be repaired or replaced. And, he said, since our…...
Great brands are built through focus. It’s often very hard for a small company, especially a young one, to limit its concept of “who is our customer” and “what do we sell.” But trying to market all the things you might do or could do to all of the people who might use your products or […]
What is it that makes your company special? How are you different? Why should a customer buy from you rather than from someone else? Learning to express your distinct value proposition is a key requirement for growing business with bigger customers–especially if you are a small company going after customers that are significantly bigger than […]
Are you one of the executives who still think social media is frivolous, trivial, and unrelated to your business? Think again! In this article, I explain the value of just one of the social media tools to find a personal introduction into a new large account prospect, to locate employees and past employees that you […]