In modern business, as we’ve discussed above, there are so many different competitors to every
single product. It’s not because products are original, it’s just that there is such an abundant
market for each that there are enough buyers to go around. People are able to differentiate
themselves to niche markets, and it makes it easy to create a new product that is super similar
to an old one.
With this comes the fact that customers may ask what makes you different or more valuable than
a competitor. A frustrating question, to be sure, when you’ve been working on building and
structuring something wonderful that you’re deeply passionate about. The important and first
thing to remember is that imitation is the best form of flattery; then, take into consideration
that this is a way to gain insight and feedback into what you can shift about your marketing
strategy or the product itself to make these even clearer to your customers.
From there, instead of a template for you to follow,
our friends
at Drift
have a few excellent guidelines on the things to consider when you are responding
to a customer who asks something like this:
-
Be honest.
You are not going to have every feature, integration, or near the
same reliability at first. But you want to win and need to let your
customers know that you’re hungry for their feedback. So be honest
about what you can do for them today.
-
Listen.
You need to make sure you hear them out. Why are they even comparing
you with the competition in the first place? Are they using their
product and not happy? How did they hear about you? Are they aware
of your product? Do they see you already as formidable competitor
or are you simply missing X? When someone asks how you are different,
you need to go beyond the surface and figure out why they are asking
in the first place. Ask as many questions as you can before giving
a specific answer about a certain feature — you’ll be surprised
at what you can uncover.
-
Positioning.
You can’t be everything to everybody, and as a result, you need
to learn how to say no. Focus on building a product that is simple
and solves a problem for a specific group of people. Patience
is key — at first, you might not know enough to uniquely position
yourself, but you are going to have to. Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
call this nailing
a niche
(and a niche doesn’t have to be small).
-
Customer service.
There’s one thing people want more than features: your attention.
If you deliver unparalleled customer service in the early days,
you’ll win customers for life. People like doing business with
people.
-
Price.
If you are focusing on revenue early on, you are wasting your time.
The most valuable thing you can get is feedback, and you can’t get
it if no one is using your product. Plus, the one thing you can
always beat the competition on is price — at first, at least. If you
have a customer on the hook, don’t lose a deal in the early days over
price. But you need to make sure that price alone is not the
motivator. You are looking for customers that are asking about your
customer service, features, speed, reliability, vision, and more.
Those are the key reasons why you want a customer to switch — or else
they will leave the first time you make a change to your pricing.
-
Testimonials.
If you can get just one customer to make the switch, you can get
another. If you can get five, you can get ten. And this momentum will
keep building the more you can share testimonials and anecdotes from
other customers that have successfully migrated over from
a competitor.
By remembering these few things as you respond, you should be able to write your email
in a conscientious way that wins you a customer, rather than one that pushes them away. Remember:
never try to schmooze or over-promise a feature-set that your company doesn’t have. It’ll only
land you with frustrated, disappointed customers in the future.