This morning a question was posted on LinkedIn from Kimberly Horn an Area Sales Consultant with Elwood Staffing.

Her question was:

How do you step outside of the box and differentiate yourself from your competition?

My reply:

“You need to know about two things.

1. Your Customers
2. Your Competition

I would create a matrix for all of the factors that your customers find important in your product, services, or industry. Once you have identified this information than you need to determine who your competition really is then find out what they are doing in the areas your customers find important.

This will give you the ability to see right now how you are the same, different, and where you you need to change. This also gives you an opportunity to pick areas where you and your team can thinking how you can be different.

A great example is Saturn. They looked at all the factors in the car industry especially ALL the things that were important and frustrations for their customers and they reinvented the way a dealership sold cards.

With in the past six months Hyundai had a commercial that said if you lost your job they would take your car back.  Now, I took it as they would relieve you from the burden of the new car payment and help you.

Soon after Saturn came out with a commercial painting the picture that Hyundai taking your car back would he horrible so they weren’t going to take your car back, they were going to make your payment for 9 months.

I guess the lesson here is Saturn pays attention to everything. That’s exactly what you need to be doing if you are going to get a head and differentiate yourself from your competition.”

Pay Attention!

I don’t care if you are selling a product or looking for job.  You must really understand what the people you are trying to influence are looking for.    Your competition is . . . so you better!

Do you want to be average?

Jason Kiesau Business Leadership, Sales & Marketing