Have you come up with your sustainable advantage? That’s the “edge” that you have over your competition, and the reason for your customers to buy from you. If you wonder why
- you struggle to win customers
- your customers often buy from your competition, or
- you have to offer the lowest price to get the sale
you probably haven’t found a your competitive advantage, or aren’t putting it to use. That’s okay: you can change that and let your customers know that there really is a good reason to buy from you, and only you.
The first step is finding a…
Sustainable Advantage: Ask yourself these questions
Your competitive advantage is what you do better than anyone else. But to work for the long term you really want it to be sustainable, and work for the long term.
The first step in identifying your advantage is taking a look at your organization: what do you do well? What do you pride yourself on? What have you worked on to improve? What are your strengths (and weaknesses)?
The next step is even more important: What’s important to your customers? You can have lots of advantages that set you apart (like…you can hula-hoop for an hour…you can wiggle your ears…or you’re the only one with blue widgets), but unless they’re important to your customer, they’re not going to help you. To be successful, your customers’ wants and needs are the bottom line: if it’s not important to them, they don’t have a reason to buy from you.
What’s important to your customers?
In New York you’ve got a lot of competition. Whether you sell cars or pizza, coffee or home improvements, consumers have lots of choices to choose from. You’ve got to stand out from all that competition if you want to win the customer.
Do you know what’s important to your customer?
Typical “advantages”
Businesses often fall back on the same “tried and true” advantages that they claim sets them apart
- Price: Walmart is probably the best known business that claims “the low price advantage.” And with their economies of scale, they may be right. But do you want to just keep lowering prices…and cutting profit? You can do it for a while, but eventually your competition will do the same. So for you, that’s probably not a “sustainable” advantage.
- Customer Service: this is a tough one, especially these days. Even legendary customer service providers like Ritz Carlton and Starbucks struggle to get staff…
and their service levels have suffered
- The “first” one to offer what you do. Many companies whose brands are household names have been successful…only to be imitated and fallen from their leadership positions: Xerox, Kleenex, Bandaids, Scotch tape…all created their markets. But eventually competitors copied them, and their advantage crumbled.
What’s your sustainable advantage?
It could be your family recipe, or your customer experience, or unique products could be the best way for you to create and maintain an advantage in your market place. Understanding what’s important to your customers (or potential customers) and how you meet their needs can set you apart from the competition.
Ask them
Ask your customers! Ask them what’s most important to them and pay attention to their answers…they might surprise you.
Tell them
When you identify the advantages that have attracted customers in the past, reinforce it by telling them in all your marketing…your advertising, website, social media, brochures and messages on hold.
Without a sustainable advantage, your competition will win your customers. So once you discover a truly important one, make sure they know what makes you their best choice.
