What's Your "Only-One Advantage?"

What if there was something about your business that literally forced people to buy from you? How would that affect your income and your lifestyle?

Not possible or practical you say?

Please consider the following. It will help you develop a strategy that could potentially stun your competition and leave them scratching their heads about what to do. And it just might help you corner the market in your industry.

First, get out a piece of notebook paper and make a list of all the things you do for your customers. Just do a brain dump of everything you offer from price to service. Now cross off every item that is also offered by your competitors.

How did you do?

Is there at least one thing that you do that your customers must have that your competitors don't do? If not, then why should people do business with you versus your competition?

If you have some things that you do that are unique to your business, the next step is to evaluate them in terms of their relevance to your customers.

Suppose you offer free delivery or a free service contract or free replacement parts. Those items all sound good, but unless you prove they are meaningful to your customers, they won't be the tipping point that makes you indispensable.

The simplest and best way to prove your benefits are significant is to ask your current and past customers what they like best about what you do. You may find that what they really like is different than what you thought they'd like. This can be an eye-opening and highly rewarding process for you. When you can identify what your customers really like, you can focus on those things in your advertising and promotion efforts.

Ideally, at least one of the things your customers like about you will be something that your competitors don't offer. You can then test this as your only-one advantage.

Or it could be that what your customers like about you is also offered by your competitors but they don't publicize it. Something that might be standard operating procedure yet unpublicized might be extremely important to your customers. If you are the first to publicize it, you can preempt your competition. If they start publicizing it they may appear to be copycats.

If you don't have an obvious only-one advantage, you may have to create one. The key is to test it first to make sure it's both meaningful to your customers and profitable to you.

For example, let's say you're a dentist and you heard that offering spa-like amenities would be an advantage to you in your trade zone. Before you spend lots of money, you might want to poll your patients first to learn how they perceive your environment now. If their feedback indicates that your office could use a makeover, only then should you consider making the investment.

What if you've thought and thought and you can't seem to come up with an only-one advantage that makes sense? You can use a fall-back advantage that is easy to implement and test in most cases: a bold guarantee.

First, take a look at your competitors and see what they do in the way of a guarantee. Most guarantees are shallow and toothless. Can you design an iron-clad, no-holds-barred, outrageous guarantee that is so powerful, it will be a no-brainer for people to try you out?

Federal Express, Dominos Pizza and Sears all built billion-dollar businesses based on some kind of strong guarantee. So if you don't have anything else, you can implement a better guarantee as your only-one advantage.

For assistance with marketing strategy and developing your only-one advantage contact Ben Edwards today at 617-670-1888, ext. 1.