What Makes Your Company Special/Different Than Its Competition?

I have heard this question asked many times to sales and marketing people. It is sad to sometimes hear the answers they give. Some of the responses I have heard include “Our product is better.”, but they don’t say how it is better, or “Our product is a higher quality.”, but they don’t describe the difference in quality. In today’s highly competitive marketplace it is important to be able to answer this question quite specifically.

Is your product truly the only one of its kind in the marketplace? If not, did your company start out by making a copy of another product, but are offering it at a lesser price? If you copied an existing product but improved upon it, how is it improved? Does your product outlast the competition? Is it faster, quieter, sturdier, smaller, larger, prettier, does it work differently, is it easier to operate, does it do more, does it run more efficiently and/or cost effectively, or is it less expensive to buy? If you want to be successful at selling your product, you must be able to choose how your product is different than your competition and then list all the advantages of owning one of yours instead of one of theirs.

When you can effectively answer the question of what makes your product special, you will be able to sell much more of it.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.