Imagine your business as an elite athlete…how would it compete against others in your field doing the same thing? I mean really compete head-to head; take the gloves off and the best person wins.

This past weekend the World Team Wrestling Trials were held in Oklahoma City. These are not characters of the WWE, Smackdown, or one of the other Pro Wrestling productions. These are the real modern day gladiators of one of the oldest sports in history. There are few sports that require the level of conditioning and commitment that is demanded of an elite wrestler.

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Your prospective clients are hungry…are you feeding them good stuff?

Whether we like it or not you have to have a presence on the internet…if I hear about you from a friend, if I meet you at a networking event and get your card or if I stumble across you on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook the first thing I’m likely to do if I find you interesting is to find your website and check you out.

I’m looking for a better understanding of who you are, what you do and why I should care.  I’m hungry for information and if you want me to do something beyond a quick glance, you need to feed me something tasty and nutritious.

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The holy grail of business is coming up with a competitive advantage that can’t be reasonably matched by your competitors.  If you can pull it off, you essentially don’t have competitors.  When you think of creating competitive advantage, you typically think of innovation, maybe technology, barriers of entry of some sort, maybe even some sort of geographic advantage (think oil fields).

However there is another way to develop a competitive advantage and although he doesn’t expressly lay it out that way, that’s what Guy Kawasaki’s latest book Enchantment (The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions) made me think about.  (Full Disclosure:  I received a free review copy of the book – thanks Guy!).

Quick – think about the coolest restaurant you’ve ever been to.  Maybe it’s an elaborately themed place in Vegas…or that hole in the wall diner where everyone knows your name and just fits you.  Or maybe it’s the place that got everything right and you walked out feeling like you had more than a meal, you had an experience.

That’s what Kawasaki means when he talks about Enchantment!  It’s about creating a genuine feeling of delight in your customers and prospective customers.

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  photo by TheBusyBrain

It can be really tough to explain to people why they should spend their hard earned money with you rather than the competition.

As an example, let’s pretend that you have a catering company…and that your target market is the business crowd – larger groups that like a variety of hot and cold lunch opportunities, they need a cost effective, easy to use, reliable service.

How would you present yourself from a marketing perspective?

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In today’s competitive environment it’s more important than ever to have a competitive advantage – something that puts you above the general fray of your industry.

Maybe you have a unique technology advantage…a patented something or other that no one else has.

Maybe you were first in your space and really own the marketplace (95 of the top 100 companies use our service…).

Maybe you’re faster, better a different business model – there can be lots of ways to build a competitive advantage.

However if you’re stuck on what yours might be, you should look at your core values and your vision as a possible way to stand out and make yourself different from the crowd.

Do you have customers that buy from you because of what you stand for?  Great employees that do more than you expect because they believe in the bigger picture of where you’re taking the business?

I’ve written before about how to find your core values, but even more importantly you can actively use those core values as a differentiator…a competitive advantage.

(photo by Zach Dischner)

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