Here are 10 ways to differentiate outside of just product features.
Every market is packed with competitors.
Every new feature is quickly copied.
We need to differentiate more than ever, but it can’t be on product alone.
Consider these 10 approaches in your 2023 planning:
Brand Reputation ❤️
How established and recognized is your brand? What affinity do buyers have towards it? This matters a lot when you’re convincing people to do business with you. When products are apples to apples, brand is massive.
Sales Process 🧭
What’s it like buying from your company? Are your reps pushy, rude, or untrustworthy? Or are they helpful, honest, and consultative? Your sales process can be a big differentiator, since it can signal to buyers what the rest of your customer journey will look and feel like.
Customer Success 🏆
Do you partner with customers to drive best practices and make them successful? It’s one thing to purchase a product, but implementing it successfully is a whole different ballgame. Show buyers that you’re more than just a product. You’re a partner who’s invested in their success.
Implementation ⚒️
What’s it like onboarding with your product or service? How quickly can you get customers seeing value? If your strength is helping customers achieve success quickly, use that to your advantage.
Pricing Model 💵
This doesn’t have to mean you’re the cheapest. It could be that your pricing scales better, provides more flexibility for their use case, or offers flexible payment terms for their stage of growth.
Partner Ecosystem 🔌
How deep is your partner ecosystem? If you have a wide range of tech and service partners, leverage that as a key competitive advantage. What value-added services and integrations exist that can help your customers be successful?
Domain Expertise 🧠
Do you have specific domain expertise across your company? Do you have many customers in a specific vertical? Does a portion of your dev team come from a specific industry? Leverage this to position your company as a leader in your space.
Freemium / Free Trial 🔑
Are you the only vendor offering a free trial or freemium option? This is a clear advantage when trying to attract buyers. Remove the friction from getting started with your product.
Community 🙌
How strong is your customer community? Are you building something that people want to be a part of? Something that will provide incremental value on a business a personal level? Create a club everyone wants to be part of.
Adoption 📈
Does your product, onboarding, and service approach result in greater product adoption? People put their necks out to endorse a new piece of software. Having confidence that a solution will drive strong adoption within their company is super important.
So there it is, 10 ways you can differentiate your company and create a competitive advantage outside of simply product features.
If you can think of any others, please add them below!
Comments:
A big thanks to Rahim Kaba and Jennifer Barry at Gartner for exploring this topic with me 🙏