You’re fired!
Sometimes, we as professional salespeople need to say that to some of our customers- you cannot be everything to
everyone-if you attempt to do that, your product/service/brand has no sustainable differentiation and as a result is doomed
to be price-shopped, till you are eliminated by your Chinese brethren or Eastern European businessman, where the price
of labor is a lot cheaper and production costs have reached the bottom of the Average Cost curve (remember those from
Microeconomics 101).
If you try to please everyone you don’t delight anyone- today the need of the hour is consumer delight-where you enthrall
your client by offering something of considerable value to them, which they cannot get anywhere else. Differentiation
creates value and value creates Brand Equity, which in turn commands a price for your product/service that is worth
shooting for and aligning the entire organization towards.
In order to create differentiation and exclusivity, you have to be exceptional in certain areas/ service categories. Black is
boring- Orange is the new Black, no pun intended (The same title serial just won the Tony award for the best TV
production-you can catch its second season on Netflix). GE was very clear with their focus-they got out of businesses if
they could not be # 1 or # 2 in them. There is no place for ordinary today. There is no second chance to create a winning
first impression. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.
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