Yesterday I commented that the business world is changing more rapidly than it used to. That’s obvious to all of us. The implication for companies is that reacting to change is no longer enough for survival. For a company to survive – and certainly to thrive – it must proactively adapt to change. It must spot trends before and as they emerge, and innovate in order to enjoy success in the future.

How can a business do this? It isn’t as mysterious as having a crystal ball. The great innovative companies that I’ve seen do it through these four tools:

1. They use customer insight and competitive intelligence tools that work, and they try new ones as they emerge.  (I’ll write about some cool new competitive intelligence tools in my next blog.)
2. They have internal and external feedback mechanisms to track customer and employee satisfaction and capture ideas.
3. They have structures that are lean and nimble so they can innovate and implement new ideas quickly.
4. They are open to the possibility that they don’t know everything, and build structures to allow them to tap into market movements that are difficult to foresee.  One tool for this is a Gambling Fund.  I’ll also write about this in a later blog.

I read all sorts of fancy business books that inundate the reader with technical jargon and theoretical systems which supposedly help you sell your product or service. While some of these books offer interesting insights – I think a lot of it is BS.

To improve sales and marketing you should focus on what Mr. Warren Buffet speaks of all the time – Competitive Advantage. If you can communicate your competitive advantage(s) clearly – you will sell more. Guaranteed. When a potential customer asks you “why the hell should I buy from you?” – you should have a list of objective statements that support why you are better than the next chump. Delivering cliches and overarching subjective statements doesn’t cut it. Example:

Bad Competitive Advantage Statement: “We are comitted to high quality customer service.”

Good Competitive Advantage Statement: “Mezzanine works with 5 of the top 10 technology firms on the Branham 300 list and has a proprietary database of customer satisfaction data that allows our technology clients to objectively benchmark how well they know their customers.”

Sweeping statements like “we are committed to high quality customer service” are ineffective. Great – you are committed to customer service – along with every other business in existence. Being able to deliver objective statements that outline why you are better than the competition will help you sell more. And if you can’t identify quantitatively why you are better – start trying. Talk to past customers and try to understand how your product or service helped them – focus on objective data from your customers that will yield you quantitative results.

So next time someone asks “why should I buy from you?” think about delivering one or two (or as many as you can identify) objective reasons why you are better.