The Best Way to Claim and Prove Your Differentiation

For over a handful of years now I’ve been developing the marketing strategy and marketing plans for professional service firms and the most claimed differentiation I hear is “our people are what makes us different” and the problem I notice from doing a competitive analysis is 17 other firms in the same market are saying “our people are what makes us different.”

So the real insight here is to acknowledge that really standing for something — a point of view, an approach, a way of doing things — means you don’t have to compete.

That if you’re competing on price it’s because you’ve established that what you do is interchangeable and the same as what other people do. You are not the one and only.

I often ask firms that say what sets them apart is their people, to prove it, because I notice they’ll hire their people the same way everyone else hires their people, they’ll compensate their people the same way and their turnover is something they fight as opposed to encourage so I don’t believe them and if they’re not spending 148 hours a year training their people I don’t believe them. Basically what they’re saying is we got a bunch of people and they got a bunch of people.

Don’t just claim a differentiation make sure it’s true & provable with processes, systems & habits.