Differentiators – Stand Out From Your Competition

Sep 9, 2020 | Blog, Sales and Marketing

Differentiators – Stand Out from your Competition Featured Image
If you can’t identify how you are different from your competitors then you can’t grow as a company.

The main ways to stand out from the competition depends on what problem you solve and how you solve it.

A market research blog by Priority Metrics Group states that a “difference is worth establishing when it meets at least one of the following criteria:” 

  • Valuable: the perceived benefit exceeds the cost
  • Important: delivers a benefit critical to success
  • Distinctive: unique or offered in a distinctive way
  • Superior: better technology, faster
  • Emotional: ties to a core emotion — love, hate, desire
  • Communicates: understood and visible
  • Preemptive: cannot be easily copied
  • Affordable: customers can pay the higher price
  • Profitable: contribution (margin times volume) exceeds cost of difference

In order to identify which criteria are best to focus on, it’s easier to look at your current customers and understand what was the hook for them.  

With Lead411, I did an exercise where I looked at our G2Crowd reviews  for common words that are associated with the differentiating criteria above.  Words like: Time, Cost, Customer Service, Love, Hate, Price, Success, Easy, Fast, etc.  I looked for patterns and was able to see how our customers really felt, which is what I use in our marketing.

For Lead411, our customer reviews mentioned the following by frequency:

  • Easy/Easier (31%)
  • Time (22%)
  • Price/Cost/Affordable (21%)
  • Accurate/reliable (20%)
  • Best (16%)
  • New Leads (11%)
  • Love (10%)
  • Quality (10 %)
  • Customer Service (6%)
  • Useful (5%)
  • Success (3 %)
  • Fast (3%)
  • Inaccurate (1%)
  • Hate (0 %)

This was a useful exercise to identify what words our customers are using when describing Lead411.  Using these words I was able to establish differentiators which I use in marketing content for the company. It is important to note that looking through the words used in our reviews, I determined a positive/negative connotation and also combined results for fast/faster etc. 

Seeing “Easy” and “Time” at the top of this list is consistent with our perceived value and superior technology as differentiators in our market space.  We strive to make our solution easy to use for our customers, so they can save time finding ideal prospects quickly.  It was also nice to see that people love our solution more than they hate us 🙂

Recent Posts

7 Sales Quotes to Help Motivate your Day

7 Sales Quotes to Help Motivate your Day

In the thrilling universe of B2B sales, where charm battles objections and wit engages prospects, a touch of motivation and humor can turn a cold call into a warm lead. Here are some of the best motivational B2B sales quotes, where each quip comes with a source – a...

read more
Top 5 Company Enrichment API Tools in 2024

Top 5 Company Enrichment API Tools in 2024

Here are the Top 5 Best Company Enrichment API's for your CRM Lead411 Clearbit Zoominfo Demandbase FullContact If you want to make it in the fast-paced sales and marketing industry, you need access to precise and current corporate information. Many businesses rely on...

read more