How do you best understand and state your differentiators?

Differentiators come from the places where your solution exceeds the competitors.

?Cut and dried, right?

How many features do you have, how many ways your product will excel over the competition.

But this is just the surface. There are so many other elements to dig into when it comes to true differentiation. And all of it comes down to what is prominent in the minds of your customer.

Placement in the market

One of the first areas that will matter for customers is where you show up in a placement against your competitors. This often comes down to where you place with regard to the analysts that review your products or services.

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This could be a Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester Wave, two of the more common high tech analyst firms. Or it could be how you rate on Google maps reviews for local businesses, (typically more consumer focused). It could also be a ratings industry situation. What is your financial strength, and are you a AAA business, or do you have a particular cyber security rating?

All of these elements come from services that have an opinion of your business from the outside. Being familiar with where you place across many of these services is critical to understand how to truly build your differentiator statements.

Features and Benefits

Additionally, you may have a tightly competitive market. You are just one of say twenty vendors selling much the same solution. In those circumstances, you probably need to have a side-by-side feature comparison matrix just so you can identify what makes your specific product better.

Doing research on this can be dumfounding and difficult because not all products are on the market for public viewing. But for those of you who work in fields where your competitors post heavily on YouTube, X, or to other public places. In these instances, you can take an afternoon and do competitive research on all of them, taking screen shots, pulling videos, and looking for data sheets and such to put in side-by-side comparisons. Not to mention just reading their websites from front to rear.

If you were to do this, putting together a PowerPoint or slide deck of your choice, snagging similar screen shots across the full breadth of your competitors, just to understand what they do versus what you do is incredibly powerful. Using the same deck, snip the statements from data sheets that are intended to be the most persuasive on their topic.

Understanding the competition deeply

Once you have done the research on the products you are reviewing, then you really need to understand the underlying technologies, if it is a tech solution. Or the underlying business process if it isn't tech. The tech side might be things like "is it built on a given database, is it cloud or on prem, is it Microsoft? Is it Linux/Unix, or Mac? Big platform starting points like these give you indications of the mindset the developers had when they built their solution.

The business process side of the world might be things like "is this a company with a solution driven by government mandates, like GDPR?" Or "Does this solution have to follow strict polices because of the various DEI areas of concern? Knowing where you and your competitors come from on these fronts can inform your differentiators in non-technical ways that can be very compelling for your customers.

?Wrapping the differentiators into definitive statements

It can be hard to come up with differentiators for a company if they are not already built. That being said, if your company doesn't have them, you probably need to have at minimum an opinion on what those differentiators are, and have them on the tip of your tongue. Some might call this an elevator pitch. But however, you think of it, if you cannot articulate your company or products differentiators succinctly, both in writing and verbally, you will find succeeding difficult.?

Compelling differentiators are things that once said become "self-evident".

• They must be true, and provable, (ideally when you show the customer your proposal or solution).
• They should be directly related to the customers problem. Saying you have the strongest shark cage for adventurers won't help the person looking for kitchen equipment to cook shark steaks.

Leverage Persuasion in your statements

Visual Persuasion

Being able to come up with statements that border on outlandish but prove your statement true about your product are excellent ways to be remembered. The example above about sharks is designed to catch your attention. In so doing, ideally, when a customer is comparing you to the competition, things you illustrated with a strong visual stick in peoples mind. Remember to be tasteful and intelligent in your choice of images.

Repetition

Knowing how to repeat things over the course of your engagement, be it in writing, or verbally, takes you a long way in being remembered and chosen. Stating things that are true and provable repeatedly in a few different ways in conversation, or in writing will reinforce your product. This is the essence of how commercials work. You see them over and over, and later, you think, "who should I go to for a new windshield?" (I am not going to say the answer here, but you know who I mean, post it in the comments!)

Stories

This is such common knowledge now, you should be thinking in this manner from the beginning. Telling a story about how x affected y, or your memories of something, in a way that illustrates how your product or solution fixed something goes a long way in persuasion.

Ask and Answer

When you ask a rhetorical question about something, and then provide the answer, other people will actually feel like you read their mind. The question doesn't have to be clever or deep, it just has to be a question tied to the customer's problem. If you ask it, then answer it, you have connected with your customer, even if you can't see it on the surface.

Creates Change

Your customer's problem is not just something to placate with words. If your customer chooses your solution, the nature of their problem should change. If you can actually describe that change, and illustrate how that will be a different experience from before, you will be removing the stress of their problem. Change that isn't needed causes anxiety. But change that fixes a major problem creates positive emotions.

Well-crafted differentiators make all the difference!

?There are so many ways to craft your differentiators. It is up to you to decide if the ones you already have are sufficient, or if you need to brainstorm out a better message. Take this seriously and early in the process of coming up to speed, and you will have a level of mastery of your message that will resonate with your customers need, and help you to become a more successful seller, be it verbally, in writing, or through your actions.