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Marketing-for-Leads Guide: Step 8 – What are your competitive advantages?
Step 8: Determine your company’s competitive advantages and how best to articulate them.
You need to leverage your company’s unique selling proposition to articulate for prospects what is in it for them (the solution) if they buy from you. For example, if you are an individual consultant, you could articulate your competitive advantage by explaining that you will not be relegating the prospect’s business to an inexperienced employee. You could also point out that, because you are a small company, the prospect’s business will be very important to you—more important than it would be to a larger vendor.
If yours is a large company, you could talk about the depth of expertise represented by your large staff. Or you could point out that you wouldn’t have grown so large if you didn’t provide the highest quality products or services.
Pinpoint your company’s competitive advantages by using a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Start a list under each category.
Then determine which of those you can do something about. Are there threats you can turn into opportunities? An example of a threat would be the downsizing occurring in prospect companies. You can turn that into an opportunity by articulating the operational efficiency provided by your product or service offering.
To articulate your company’s competitive advantage, tell customers why the advantage is relevant to them. Here are some examples:
Competitive advantage: Your company has the capacity to mass produce silicon micro-gizmos.
Articulation: "We can supply all your silicon micro-gizmos with minimal lead time, thanks to our annual production capability of 4,000 tons."
Competitive advantage: Your company is the only one in the industry headquartered in the Miami area.
Articulation: "We can provide just-in-time service for Greater Miami-based companies because we are headquartered in Coral Gables."
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Competitive advantage: Your company has a nationwide network of service centers.
Articulation: "We can support all your installations, coast to coast, through our nationwide network of technicians."
“To articulate your company’s competitive advantage, tell customers why the advantage is relevant to them.”
I think many companies make the mistake of making general, sweeping statements about their “competitive advantage”. We concentrate too much on what we can do, why we’re the best, why they should choose us but we don’t always mention our products or services’ specific relevance to customers. After all, it’s their needs that matter. Thanks for the samples Mac.
Posted by: zsa zsa | Mar 1, 2009 at 11:22 pm