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In this podcast, industry entrepreneur and business consultant David Blaise provides some specific tips to help you differentiate yourself from your competition.
Whenever you think about differentiating yourself from your competition, you need to think in terms of two things. Essentially, it’s what we say and what we do, but not necessarily in that order.
Hi and welcome to the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you with us again. In this episode, we’ll be talking about how to differentiate yourself from the competition. This is a topic that was raised with me recently at the ASI show in Long Beach, and I thought I’d share some additional insights with you on that today. But first, a quick shout-out to all the established Inner Circle and AIM SmartEQP members who are listening, as well as all the new members who have joined us in recent days, weeks, and months. A lot of the live training that we’ve done. We conducted live training at the ASI show in Orlando, the PPA I expo in Las Vegas, the ASI shows in Dallas and Long Beach. And I’m looking forward to seeing you at the ASI show in New York. That’s happening May 5th and 6th.
I’ve got training sessions on Lead Generation Made Simple, How to Earn More by Doing Less, The Way Multimillion-Dollar Producers Sell, Self-Promo Power, How to Create Eye-Catching Marketing Campaigns, and Five Ways to Win Big Corporate and Non-Profit Clients. Those trainings are free to all attendees of the show and you can get details on that at www.asishow.com, Inner Circle and AIM Smart EQP members can also join me for our April Inner Circle teleconference in which we’ll be discussing How to Outperform and Outmarket Your Competition. Quick tips to systematize your business in your sales processes, and an open Q & A to address your individual concerns. If you’re not yet an AIM Smart EQP member, an Inner Circle member, you can register now at www.SmartEQP.com or call 1-800-494-2721. Also, Top Secrets training material is now being featured via Jeff Solomon’s Free Promo Tips newsletter. So if you subscribe to that, be sure to look out for our tips and recommendations in there as well.
To top secrets of promotional product sales, help Differentiate yourself from the competition. As I indicated earlier, I was interviewed on this topic, uh, while I was in Long Beach, and I pointed out that essentially we all have access to the same products from the same suppliers, so it is rather hard for promotional products professional to differentiate himself or herself in that way. And I identified two primary areas where we can differentiate ourselves. First, we can differentiate ourselves with our service. If we are able to provide quantifiably better service, meaning that we can actually document it, we can quantify it. For example, if your competitor is available from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM weekdays and you’re available from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM weekdays, that’s quantifiably better. They’re available for eight hours, you’re available for 10 hours. You can quantify that, you can do the math. You’re available for an extra two hours a day. So essentially you can prove that.
And if you provide quantifiably better service and better product recommendations than your competition, if you have access to better pricing from your key suppliers through perhaps our Smart EQP program, these are all things that give you a competitive advantage and allow you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. So functioning as an expert and positioning yourself as an expert can help you do that. But the second way to differentiate yourself is by communicating those differences, which we’ve already established for ourselves, educating the market, and essentially letting them know what it is that we do better and differently than our competition. Because the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t matter how different you are. If you fail to communicate those differences to your market, they won’t know that there are any differences, and as a result, your competitive advantage doesn’t exist for them. It’s as if it just doesn’t exist at all.
So to boil it down, whenever you think about differentiating yourself from your competition, you need to think in terms of two things. Essentially, it’s what we say and what we do, but not necessarily in that order. It all starts with how do I do what I do differently and better than my competition? Certainly, we’re going to be doing some of the same things that our competitors do. We’re going to have to do product research, we’re going to have to make presentations, we’re gonna have to prospect, present, follow up. We have to do all those things. So in order to differentiate ourselves, it’s not about doing different things necessarily. It’s about how we do those things better and differently. So that’s what comes first. And second, how often and how effectively do I communicate those differences to my market? Am I communicating those differences in my conversations with people in my emails, my networking, and my marketing pieces?
Am I communicating it on my website, in my text messages, my in-person visits, my case studies, my sales presentations, and my testimonials? Our job as marketers, salespeople and business owners is to make it as easy as possible for people to understand exactly what it is that makes us different and better so that they can then communicate it as well. And if you fail to communicate exactly what makes you better and different than your competitors, then really, you can’t expect anyone else to do it either. If you have any questions on this topic, be sure to go to www.topsecretswebsite.com/differentiate and enter them into the comment box. I’d be happy to answer your questions and comments right on that page. If you need help growing your business, we’re here for you. If you’re brand new to the industry, check out are getting started. Training. If you just need to get customers now, be sure to check out top seekers of customer acquisition. And if you’re established and want to get end quantity pricing with 90 plus of the top supplier lines in the industry, be sure to join our Smart EQP program@www.smart eqp.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to share it with your friends and colleagues rated on iTunes. And thank you very much for listening. It’s been a pleasure to have you with us,
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