How to Create a Competitive Advantage When Customers See You as a ‘Commodity’

Help Your Customers Answer “Why” They Want to Buy from You

Do you have price sensitive customers?  Do they tend to believe that you and your competitors all sell similar products at similar prices?

Companies whose customers tend to see their products as “commodities” have a challenge differentiating themselves from their competition. Does this describe your situation?

Let’s explore the reasons, beyond products, prices and product availability, that can influence a customer to choose you over your competition.

It all starts with your brand story.

So, what is a “brand” anyway?

“Brand” is one of the most misused words in business. I still remember the first time I heard the word brand. It was in 3rd grade, when our teacher showed us a movie about life on a farm. The images of the strong farmhands holding down the poor little calf as they branded it are branded in my memory.

Unfortunately, businesses have appropriated this vision of branding, as if branding is something we can do “to” our customers, the way farmhands brand calves. But, of course, we can’t hold down our customers and imprint our marketing messages on their brains. It’s actually quite the opposite.

You don’t brand your customers. They brand you

Unlike the farmhands, you are not the one doing the branding. As customers have interactions with your company, they create their own personal beliefs about you. Yes, you don’t brand your customers. They brand you.

Your brand is not what you say you are. Your brand is what your customers think you are.

Your #1 branding question

Your first branding question is not, “What should we put on our website homepage?” or “What’s the right color of blue in our logo?” Those questions come later.

Because your brand is what your customers think, your first branding question is this: “What do we want people to believe about us that, if they believed it, they will be loyal and committed to working with us?”

Stop for a moment and ponder this important question. Try this thought experiment:

• Imagine one of your loyal customers has just received an email from his boss, telling him that he’s giving your company too much business, and he should “spread the business around” to ensure they are getting the best deals. Your customer is not happy about this email, and he promptly marches into his boss’s office and says, “Boss, sorry, but you’ve got it all wrong. We should be giving (your company) more business, not less. Here’s why…”

What would you want your customer to say after the “Here’s why … ” that has a chance of convincing his boss?

If your customer says to his boss, “They always have product in stock, and their prices are fair,” chances are that the boss will not be persuaded, and they’ll start “spreading the business around.” You can expect the same result if your customer says this about your company to his boss: “They have been in business for years, and they have integrity.”   Yawn.

If you want this hypothetical boss to be persuaded to change their mind, your customer needs to say something that isn’t about your company but is about how your company makes the customer’s company better off.  

Please go back and read that sentence. It’s critical. Your customer doesn’t really care about who you are, or what you do, unless the customer can see how what you do and who you are makes them better off.

What if, instead of saying those things, your customer said one of these things to his boss about his relationship with your company:

• “They help me win jobs because they collaborate with me to help me meet my customer’s needs.”

• “We never fall behind schedule when we work with them because they never miss a delivery time. Never.  But when we work on a job with their competitors, there are always a few times where our crews are sitting around waiting for supplies to show up.”

• “When one of our customers has a problem, they bend over backwards to help us fix the issue. They make us look good to our customers.”

The “little why” vs. The “Big Why”

Notice the difference in the first set of statements compared the second group. In the first group of statements, your customer said things that described your company, and his boss was not convinced. I call these kinds of statements the “little why,” because they are just about your company or your products.  

The second group of statements are what I call the “Big Why.” These are reasons why this company should do business with you that go well beyond who you are, and what you do and focus, importantly, on how you make the customer better off.

This is so important, because your customer really doesn’t care all that much about you. (Sorry to be the bearer of that news!) Your customers care about themselves and their company. For the customer to value you, and be loyal to you, their beliefs need to focus on how the customer is better off because of you.

Now, of course, the three “Big Why” statements I gave above are just examples. What is your Big Why?