Saturday, October 30, 2010

"Nichefy or Die" Your 10 Steps to Joining the Top 5%

Are you cutting your prices when you could be doing this instead?  And making a whole lot more money…

You may have noticed this.

You’re losing out to competitors who are cutting their prices to get work.

And your clients appear to not value your high quality products/services…at least not enough to pay the prices you feel you deserve.

What’s going on?

Well as Jim Collins of “Good to Great” fame said,

“Good is the enemy of great.”

And I’d add that if you are great but no one knows about it, you might as well just be good.

And if you’re just good, you’ll become a commodity just like everyone else.

And you’ll soon be out of business (or wish you were).

So what do you need to do?

Don’t be a commodity

You need to get crystal clear as to what you do, or could do, to become better than everyone else in the world in your niche.

That’s the “Hedgehog” concept in the book “Good to Great.”

And since it is really difficult to be the best in the world in a very large market,

You must: Nichefy or Die.

Here’s a scary fact.
Jaynie Smith, author of “Creating Competitive Advantage” reports that 95 percent of all companies don’t even know their competitive advantages, much less how to communicate a compelling reason to choose their product or service.

And it is also a very exciting one…for those like you who see the opportunity to differentiate themselves from their competitors and take the pole position in their market.


So here’s your challenge.

By the time you’re done with this exercise you need to be able to clearly answer your client’s question,


“Why should I choose to do business with you??"

Here are 10 questions to move you in the right direction.
  1. What are you most proud of?
  2. What do your numbers say?
    1. Best services
    2. Best clients
    3. Best markets
    4. Revenues, margins, ease to work with
  3. What does your competition tell you?
    1. Who are your top competitors?
    2. What do they do better than you?
    3. What do you do better than them?
    4. Why do your clients choose them over you?
    5. Why do they choose you over them?
  4. What do your clients say?
    1. Read your testimonials
    2. What are your clients’ biggest pains?  How do you solve them?  How could you solve them?
  5. What are the unique features and benefits of your products/services?
    1. Performance
    2. Construction
    3. Process
  6. What do those unique features and benefits bring to your clients?
    1. Results
    2. Advantages
    3. Benefits
    4. Protections
    5. Enhancements
    6. Prestige
  7. Quantify those benefits.
  8. What should you stop doing?
  9. What are you not offering that you should be?
  10. What areas of your marketing and sales process can you use your newfound advantages to blow away the competition?
Did these questions jump start your creative juices?

Will you choose to join the top 5% of companies who take their business' reins and lead the pack instead of follow your competitors off a cliff?

Nichefy or Die

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