BE DiFFERENT or be dead: How to Distinguish Yourself

in the Faceless Herd Fraser Valley Social Media

Group - Sept 23, 2010

BE DiFFERENT Agenda

How to …

*** DISTINGUISH

*** DOMINATE

***GROW

*** SURVIVE

It’s all about creating…

UNIQUENESSDISTINCTIONREMARKABILITYGASPWORTHINESS INDISPENSABILITYMEMORABILITYUNFORGETTABILITYDEVOTION

The Competitive Herd…

• The herd is growing at a breathless rate• All seek the edge; advantage• And yet… undifferentiation is happening• Copying trumps uniqueness• Product myopia: Incremental feature creep• Benchmarking – shortfall gaps closed rather

than differences created or enhanced

Distinguish & Dominate

• To stand-out from the Herd…• If you can’t deliver VALUE which is

– RELEVANT (something people really care about), AND

– UNIQUE (something that ONLY you provide)

• You are in serious trouble!• In other words…..

Distinguish & Dominate

• If you’re not ReMARKABLE, you’re CoMMON, IgNORED and InVISIBLE

• If you’re not DiFFERENT, you’re DiSPENSABLE

• If you’re not DiFFERENT, you’re DEAD (or soon will be)

Distinguish & Dominate

• “You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to be indispensable is to be different” – Seth Godin, Linchpin

BE DiFFERENT Practices

Strategy CreationMarketingServing CustomersSales

BE DiFFERENT - Strategy

• DISTINGUISH = EXECUTE• Dumb down your Strategy and ACT! • Answer 3 questions & you have your

strategy– HOW BIG do you want to be? – Top Line $$

– WHO do you want to SERVE?

– HOW will you compete and WIN? VALUE; RELEVANCE; UNIQUENESS

On Uniqueness…

• ‘You don’t want merely to be the best of the best. You want to be the ONLY one’s who do what you do’

--- Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

The ‘ONLY’ Statement

• The Only Statement…

‘ We are the only ones that (offer, provide, serve, do) (value, an experience)...’

The ‘ONLY’ Statement

MUG Solutions, Vancouver:

‘We provide the ONLY solution that permanently stops people from depositing biohazard contaminants through manhole covers.’

CORUS Radio, Vancouver:

‘AM 730, All Traffic All the Time. AM 730 Vancouver’s Traffic Station is the ONLY station providing traffic twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.’

BE DiFFERENT - Strategy

• Be ANAL about Execution– 20% plan; 80% execute

– Plan ‘just about right’;

– Execute flawlessly

– Bre Pettis on Done…

BE DiFFERENT - Strategy

• Cut the CRAP– Cut list/Keep list

– Beware of custodians of the past

– Eliminate the ‘Grunge’ preventing progress

– Customer Moments are untouchable

BE DiFFERENT - Strategy

• Focus. Focus. Focus– Roy’s Rule of 3

– Focus on the critical few

• Plan on the RunLearn and adjust your strategy as you goBe ‘good’ at anticipating; ‘great’ at reactingPlan, Execute, Learn, Adjust, Execute …

BE DiFFERENT - Strategy

• Beware of Benchmarking– Best of class = ‘highest common

denominator’ to BE DiFFERENT from

– Baseline to Distinguish

– Copying = enemy of BE DiFFERENT

– Domination = distancing yourself from the herd

– BM to Improve, Yes, but NOT to Distinguish

Marketing… Today

– BORING

– LAZY

– UNDIFFERENTIATED; INVISIBLE

– PRODUCT FEATURE CREEP

– BENCHMARKING TO COPY

– MASS MARKET MANIA

– ROUND-THE-CORNERS FOCUS

– TECHNO ADULATION

– VALUE BLUR

BE DiFFERENT Marketing

• DISTINGUISH = IDENTIFY & FOCUS ON YOUR FANS

• The people who care about what you do, who are connected and will ‘Sneeze’ you to others… ‘Mavens’

• Shed mass market thinking – the ‘average’ customer doesn’t exist

• Segmentation: Small-is-good; smaller-is-better

BE DiFFERENT Marketing

• The smaller the group, the more you know about each person in the group

• AND the more relevant you can become in what you provide them

• R (Individual) = 1/Size of Group

• ‘the Rule of 150… a simple rule of thumb that distinguishes a group with real social authority from a group with little power at all’ – Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

BE DiFFERENT Marketing

• Do you know your Top 10 FANS? • Do you know your ‘Sneezers’• Do you find ways to make it easier for them to

communicate with you and among themselves?• Objective: Create word-of-mouth epidemics

BE DiFFERENT Marketing

• Move from product marketing to VALUE CREATION…

• Create packages of VALUE…• Targeted to the FANS you have chosen to SERVE• Objective: PREMIUM Pricing• DiFFERENT Brand

BE DiFFERENT Marketing

Your FANS

Mass Marke

t

Value Package

Product

Offer – BC Ferries

!!Think – CREATING EXPERIENCES/HAPINESS

‘Valley Golf Adventure’2 nights @ Crown Island ResortRound trip on BC FerriesMorning round of golf, power cart, practice

facilities$310 May – Sept 30

Offer – Fairmont Whistler

‘Mountain Adventure Package’:Nightly accommodationDaily buffet breakfast$100 credit per day towards a choice of

popular mountain activities

BE DiFFERENT Marketing

• VALUE PACKAGES … Powered by– Customer Learning – continuous learning

process

– To discover the Secrets of the FANS you have chosen to SERVE

– Core Competency

– Source of Distinctiveness

– Social Media tools useful

BE DiFFERENT Marketing

• VALUE PACKAGES … Powered by– Customer Secrets – Intimate, deep knowledge

of the individual

– Secrets discovery requires a trusted relationship

– Your top FANS: how many Secrets do you know about them?

BD Serving Customers

• DISTINGUISH = SERVANT LEADERSHIP • Serve customers don’t ‘service’ them• Service cars not people!• Its not about imposing service policy on

them; its about serving them in a way that creates delightful experiences

• Allow the customer to control you

BD Serving Customers

• Serving = CORE SERVICE + …– What they GET from you

– Satisfy ‘em

– Meet expectations 24X7X52

– You get C’s

– If not, they will leave you in a HEARTBEAT

– And SCREAM how BAD you are!

BD Serving Customers

• Serving = CORE SERVICE + SERVICE EXPERIENCE– How they FEEL

– DAZZLE ‘em with it

– Make it GASPWORTHY

– Leave ‘em BREATHLESS

– You get A’s

– Loyalty, Raving Fans & Sneezers

How to Dazzle?

VARY THE TREATMENTVary how you treat people; BE Flexible Same treatment for all = mixed level of

satisfaction Different treatment = constant level of

satisfactionEach person is DiFFERENT I won’t GASP if I am treated like the average

BD Serving Customers

• The Dazzle Factors …1. Hire Human Being Lovers

2. Kill Dumb Rules

3. Be flexible: empower Frontline to bend rules and ‘say yes’

4. Provide Dazzling Recovery from your Service Blunders: Fix your screw-up and WOW ‘em – do the unexpected (secrets)

BE DiFFERENT Sales

Roy’s Report CardC Honest concern for peopleD Selling solutions; not productsC- Problem solvingC Follow-up C- Customer Advocacy ‘on the inside’F Secret gatheringD Service RecoveryC- Overall Relationship Building

BE DiFFERENT Sales

• DISTINGUISH = RELATIONSHIPS & INTIMACY– Sell Relationships NOT Products

– Build intimate relationships with your FANS

• Long term success is about BONDING not flogging

• Compensate on RB behaviors

BE DiFFERENT - Sales

• Build compensation plan on Relationship – building behaviors– Start at 80% sales revenue; 20% RB

– Increase RB component over time

• Get customers to rate sales people on RB competencies – Customer Report Card

• They will pay attention!

Distinguish & Dominate

• EXECUTE• ONLY• SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL• PACKAGES of VALUE EXPERIENCES• FANS & SNEEZERS• SERVING & DAZZLE• HUMAN BEING LOVERS• SALES INTIMACY

Distinguish & Dominate

• DUMB RULES• WORD-OF-MOUTH EPIDEMICS• VARY THE TREATMENT• ROY’S RULE OF THREE• PLAN ON THE RUN• CUSTOMERIZE

The One and ONLY…

• Exclusive ½ - day Learning Experience on “How to Distinguish your organization from the Faceless Herd”

• Series begins in Vancouver and Toronto Fall 2010

• Learning, Practical & Interactive Experience

• 15 people per session

• Personal copy of BE DiFFERENT or be dead

The One and ONLY…

• Series begins with a GIFT Session Sept 29th

• Visit my web site or Blog Article http://bit.ly/9ZfhB1 for more details

bedifferentorbedead.com

• The One and ONLY Details• BLOG• BE DiFFERENT QUIZ • EVENTS & SEMINARS• CRITICAL PRAISE ON BOOK• VIRTUAL CONSULTING SERVICE

Thanks for Coming

- Feedback on this session please roy@bedifferentorbedead.com

- I will be posting this presentation on my web site

- Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

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