Today’s newsletter, How to Do Differentiation Differently, follows up on our last issue, offering steps to help you focus on a kind of differentiation that will mean something to your customers.
Please share your comments and experiences! How well does your organization show its individual customers that your recognize what makes each of them unique?
Read the newsletter here: How to Do Differentiation Differently
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Following your metaphor of the spices, and using them just a little at a time, remember that many spices lose their pungency if they sit on the shelf too long, and similarly, customers are not static creatures, and their preferences may change. For many years, my before dinner drink was Scotch; then then, for many more,vodka; and now (thank you, Doctor) it is cranberry juice.
I was flattered this weekend when my attorney, who had turned me on to vodka twenty years ago, offered me cranberry juice — he knew that the spice preference had changed.
But he would have won almost as many brownie points had he asked, Is it still vodka? — and would have lost points had he just served me vodka.
Steve, Thanks for the insightful newsletter article re: differentiation. What some sage said,”You can never step in the same river twice”, is true of us and our clients/customers/constituents (3 synonyms for the same thing – those whom we serve).
Just as we best serve by seeking true comprehension of their changing mission, goals, needs and status, we need to continually (usually with subtlety and through the vehicle of our services or products) show them how we also adjust to their changing context.
Thanks!
Interesting that both Randy and Larry talked about how a customer’s “spices” can change over time … how true. Thanks.