How Is Your Business Different?

Generally when I ask business owners how their business is different from their competitors, they say things like, “We provide better customer service”, or “Our product is superior to theirs”. And usually what I say back is, “Guess what, your competitors are saying EXACTLY the same thing and the average customer doesn’t know who to believe.” You see, gone are the days of “under-promising” and “over-delivering”. Your competitors are “over-promising” on their product quality, their skill level, their after sales customer service and many other aspects of their business. But most of them are “UNDER-DELIVERING”. In today’s marketplace you need to “over-promise” and then “over-deliver” on that promise. Today’s consumer is much more savvy and has access to all kinds of information, about your business, via the internet. So if you’re not delivering on your promises, someone is probably talking about it on the internet and you might not even know.

If you haven’t figured out what makes your business totally and absolutely unique, relative to your competitors, I would suggest you spend some time doing just that. Let me give you an example; a mortgage broker that I work with has a very unique business, in that he doesn’t deal with home buyers. His entire mortgage business is built on dealing with Real Estate Investors. By dealing with investors he isn’t competing with every other mortgage broker out there who deals with home buyers. He also generally gets several mortgages from each and every client, because they are buying multiple revenue properties. As a result, he is also known among the banking community and in the private lender world, as the “Expert” with real estate investors. If you ask him what makes him different he will tell you that he sits down with each of his clients and develops a 5-year plan for them to achieve their real estate investing goals and then he and his team will actually ensure that you stick to your plan. He will also tell you that if he can’t get you a mortgage, for your revenue property, through him then you won’t be able to get a mortgage anywhere else. You see he has access to approximately 15 different types of lenders, so if he can’t get the deal done, no one can. Now that’s how he is different!

How are you different?