Blending in can feel safe, but being lost in a crowd is never a good thing.  Over the years it has amazed me how many business leaders are unable to articulate their business value from the value of their competition.  In service businesses, what I hear most often, is that clients choose them because they are knowledgeable, give great service and clients feel like they really care.  All three are lovely sentiments, but at the end of the day, in service businesses, these are not distinctives, they are the bare minimum expectation of what every client should experience.

I appreciate that in most service-based businesses the distinctives around knowledge and service can be difficult to articulate.  And so, instead of focusing on these areas, we encourage clients to focus on their business value instead.  That means looking at what your business invests in, cares about, stands for, and promotes.  Those tend to be closely linked to your business value.  Similarly, look at the website of your competitors, visit their office, connect with them for coffee and hear what they have to say.  Our values are reflected in everything we as individuals, and we as businesses do and say.  By opening our eyes and ears to see and hear the differences, our own distinguishing characteristics begin to stand out.  And it is truly only by seeing how others do it, that we realize what we are doing and why we are doing it is somehow unique.

It would be fabulous to hear from you how you distinguish your business value from that of your competition.  We invite you to comment below, or email me directly at carla@allstrategy.net to share with us your differentiators.