Thriving in a “Sea of Sameness”

Greetings.  If you're like most companies and organizations, one of the biggest challenges you face is setting yourself apart from the pack in powerful ways that really matter to your customers and prospects.  And it doesn't matter if you offer a high-technology product or a low-technology service.  Over time, even the hottest products and services start to look and act alike–and that means trouble for your top-line, bottom-line and eventually your entire business.  Unless, of course, you are extremely thoughtful and consistently innovative.  

We all know that services are relatively easy to copy.  But even the most brilliant products can be copied too–either before or after they lose their patent protection. In fact, very few businesses are immune from the threat of becoming a commodity –forced to battle over price on a slippery slope that leads to marginal value and irrelevance.  This problem poses a real challenge in many industries from heavy equipment used to produce and refine oil to coffeehouses, IT services and even high-end hotels.  And in each case very solid companies with proud histories are forced to swim in a "sea of sameness."  This is a wonderful but slightly painful phrase I learned from working with a world-class hospitality company.  In their case, the distinction between hotel "products" began to blur as hotels of different brands started to all look and feel the same.  Their lobbies looked the same, their rooms looked the same, their fancy beds promising a perfect night's sleep looked and felt the same and all had super-dreamy names.  Even their food and beverage offerings looked and often tasted the same, and so did many of their basic features of customer service.  And given that their "products" were all offered through a set of similar sales channels, customers could easily compare availability and price and opt for the best value.  As a result, customers were often willing to give up their loyalty to a particular brand given a growing belief that "comparable" brands were essentially the same.

So how do you compete in a sea of sameness?  By being compelling different on the dimensions that really matter to those customers you choose to serve…  

• By having a different and better understanding of their needs and what they hope to accomplish.  
• By designing products, services and solutions that produce a significantly better result.  
• By making the customer smarter and more successful.  
• By delivering peace of mind.  
• By being faster when it matters.  
• By truly being available 24/7.  
• By helping them to anticipate danger before it happens.
• By eliminating down time.
• By creating new opportunities for them.
• By giving them the lifestyle they desire.  
• By making them healthier and even younger.  
• By creating an experience that was unlike any other in a way that mattered most.

Try to imagine a hotel that could make you healthier with each visit.  Or an oil rig that continually made itself more efficient and productive.  Or a local coffeehouse that taught its customers a foreign language or anything else they wanted to learn. Or a data warehouse that delivered real time business intelligence as it organized and improved a customer's data.   

We use to win by creating a killer product, application or solution that worked better than anyone else's.  But that's not good enough anymore. Now its all about results, and redefining the very nature of unique and authentic customer experiences that can achieve them.  

And by constantly doing less of the same.   

Cheers!