I attended a local networking recently and quite honestly, I tailed away from the meeting quite disturbed.

Actually, shook to my very core would be a better way to describe it.

Networking events are usually desperate affairs, reminiscent of a room of lecherous nightclub drunks all trying to mooch off with the hottest girls in the club, but one thing I noticed was that no business really knew very much about their businesses at all.

They really had no clue what set them apart from the chaff apart from the fact they sold widgets. The ones that did know what set them apart usually did on the one thing no sane business owner should compete on: price.

“We offer the best priced widgets in town”.

“We have deals that no other business can match”.

“You see, where we differ from the big guys is that we can offer the customer flux capacitors a good 12% cheaper than Megacorp do.”

You get the picture..

A room full of businesses hoping to attract customers into their fold and succeed through appealing to the most base of instincts, price. If this is your strategy to succeed, let me stop you right now: it’s not going to work. Actually, that’s not strictly true. It can work, but usually at the cost of your sanity or physical health — or both.

Oh and if you’re starting off your business using this model with a view to raising your prices later, well – that ain’t gonna work either.

When Tom Monaghan started Dominos Pizza in the 1960’s he didn’t compete on price. Instead he asked himself what his customers really wanted. Sure they wanted cheap pizza but if you ask any customer they’re going to say that anyways.

Well, what they really wanted was value.

What they craved was fresh, tasty, sizzling hot pizza delivered to their door in 30 minutes, or else they get it for free.

Not damp, limp tasteless and cheap pizza.

Nor pizza that takes hours to get to your house by which time you’ve given up and gone to the chipper instead.

Monaghan gave his customers real value, and went on to build up Dominos to the multi-billion dollar company it is today.

He listened to his customers, entered the conversation that his customers were having inside their head, acknowledged what their pain was, and went ahead and relieved their pain.

In the process he climbed out of the dustbin of commoditization and set his company apart from the herd.

So what is it that makes your business unique? What can you do to “climb out of the dustbin of commoditization?”

There is something, there always is.

It may not be obvious, nor may not hit you immediately.

Think about it. Without it, you’ll be just another lecherous nightclub mooch, with nothing to offer.

If you’d like yours critiqued then send on it on, and I’ll let you know what I think. I can’t promise you’ll like what I say, but the best medicine always tastes the worst.

Stay Hungry,

Keith “Fresh, Tasty and Sizzling Hot” Commins

P.S: Probably the best place you can demonstrate what sets you apart from the chaff is on your website.

A place where you can make your competitors, irrelevant.

While they are on Joe Duffy giving out stink about Mickey Noonan’s latest tax rise and how “unfair” it all is, people will be coming to you because they know that you have the X-Factor that your competitors don’t…

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

To find out how you can become that “one-eyed man” (or woman) give me a call on 087-7426631, and watch your competitors jam the Joe Duffy switchboard like the desperate, clueless mooches they are.