how to become more relevant to your customers: Part 2

Many small and midsize companies struggle to compete with low-cost providers and big brands. This video covers four strategies to make your business more relevant to your ideal customers.

The Premise

Your company may deliver great value, but if customers cannot see what makes you different from your competitors, you will quickly become irrelevant.

What Is Relative Relevance?

Relative relevance is about standing out and showing customers why they should choose your company over others offering similar solutions.
Without relative relevance, you’re stuck competing only on price, which makes your business vulnerable to cheaper alternatives.

Four Ways To Increase Your Company’s Relative Relevance

Generally, there are many ways to increase your company’s relative relevance and make your business matter. Here are four approaches:

1. Plan Like a Soccer Coach
Imagine you’re a soccer coach with the world’s best goalkeeper. You could devise an offensive strategy, but that would waste your greatest asset. A better approach would be to build a defensive strategy that saps your opponent’s stamina, ensuring victory in the long run.
The same principle applies to the business world. Every company is a little different, has strengths and weaknesses, different people and skills. Yet most companies play the game the same way as everyone else. They say the same things, promise customers the same things, make the same offers, do the same things. This makes no sense.

Like soccer teams, companies have to adapt their strategy to their particular qualities.

Your UVP needs to be more than „quality products at fair prices.“ Find what no competitor can match – whether it’s your approach, your team’s expertise, or a unique feature – and make that your calling card.

2. Focus Your Resources

The twin brother of focussing on your strengths is narrowing down your impact area. When you spill a bucket of water, it makes a huge splash. If you press the same amount of water through a nozzle, you can use it to cut stone.

Often companies follow to many initiatives, for the resources they have – leading to unsatisfying and ineffective solutions, that don’t make the cut compared what others do.

Focusing the same resources on fewer areas will give a company fewer levers, but they will be much stronger.

3. Customer Service From Another Planet

Research shows that over half of consumers will reduce or stop spending after one bad customer experience. So investing in customer service can make all the difference.

To make customer service your differentiator:

• Spend more on service – Allocate resources toward exceptional customer care as you grow
• Act on feedback – Treat every customer like your most important buyer and respond to their suggestions
• Be faster – Don’t make anyone wait unnecessarily. People feel valued when they receive a quick reply, and overlooked if they don’t.

4. Dare to Be Different

People can’t choose you for being different if they don’t know what makes you different. If customers get lost in generic information that everyone shares, there’s no mental space left to understand your unique factors.

Most customers assume that you are good at what you do; otherwise, you wouldn’t be in business. They expect quality. So, there’s no need to emphasise that. Instead, highlight what makes you different.

Want more advice on becoming the one for your customers? Consider hiring us for a keynote speech, workshop or in-person consulting.