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This could also be hard for young entrepreneurs and small businesses with ambitious plans to scale to hear, but not everyone is your customer. Differentiation starts with finding your expertise and market, and then getting to the value you offer. In this sense, standing out is about showing more of your authentic self and your company, not less about being all things to all people.
The danger of this second approach is getting lost in the crowd. The moment a company’s product or service is compared by the market, it already becomes a commodity, which implies that it could actually only compete on price.
Even established corporations need to know when to pivot if their expertise is not aligned with customer needs. Adobe has moved away from a very successful business model offers its suite of graphic design applications on a subscription-based model. This was part of a broader strategy to adapt to emerging customer behavior patterns in a cloud-based environment. After a torrent of early criticism, the next numbers are impressive: Adobe reported record revenues of $19.41 billion in fiscal yr 2023 and is currently the case over 33 million subscribers.
While Adobe’s move may have initially been perceived as dangerous, the best way to build and maintain a sustainable business model is to discover the right customer for your enterprise or remain flexible enough to adapt to customer preferences.
Know your expertise to provide value
Fake it ’til you make it is bad advice for recent business leaders. Self-awareness is needed to understand your unique value proposition and align it with the customer’s real needs. This allows you to then focus on maximizing this value. Promising expertise you do not already have often happens when entrepreneurs chase the mistaken customer – but the right customer doesn’t have to be elusive.
Remember, it’s one thing to invest resources into reaching customers who can afford what you offer, but it’s one other thing to make sure they really pay for it. While this could go without saying, the next part is crucial. These same customers must see value in your product or service. The concept of value could be subjective, but that is the point: the right customer is one who values what you’ll be able to provide because you differentiate them from the competition and satisfy a tangible need or desire.
Compare this to the temptation to chase big name brands in B2B marketing – it could actually be blinding. Of course, it is still true that we must respond to customer needs, perhaps greater than ever in a world that expects speed and convenience. However, as a CEO, when I visit a client, I try to understand how we are going to align our interests to provide value to the client and gain advantages for ourselves. Alignment of interests is useful to each parties.
How to invest in sustainable development
When there is a natural affinity between what the company provides and what the customer needs, there is no sacrifice – only mutual advantages. A transparent understanding of your individual expertise gives you the confidence to say “I don’t know” when asked to go beyond it. This can prevent a lot of unnecessary persuasion. The easy rule is that if you have to pursue or persuade customers, they are probably not customers for you.
Once you align your interests, repute can turn out to be a form of marketing for your company, allowing you to stay true to the core values and expertise that got you here. Is branding. For example, Apple is famous for changing its solutions customers into evangelists. The tech giant avoids aggressively pursuing customers by always adapting to their needs, and in some cases becoming self-destructors. They built an identity based on questioning the established order.
So don’t let a unique part of your value proposition get lost when potential sales data arrives. Stick with what you are good at and trust that it could actually be replicated or evolved once a solid foundation is laid. Instead of telling customers what you think they need to hear, stay true to your authentic self and values to build credibility for the long haul.
Align, refine and double
When Amazon launched its first Kindle in 2007, it sold out inside hours. Its genesis was Jeff Bezos’s identification of books as one of the five product categories with the biggest e-commerce potential. The e-commerce giant opened its popular bookstore in 1995, so by the time it developed the e-book reader, it already had an enthusiastic market.
The first Kindle looked clunky compared to the devices of its time, but Amazon never strayed from its principal goal: serving individuals who love reading. Now, next-generation Kindles come with an X-ray feature that enables readers to learn more about a character, topic, event, place, or any other term. Other features like vocabulary-building flashcards show how Amazon is always innovating to provide the best reader experience.
In other words, play to your strengths, but don’t overplay your hand. The founder of outdoor clothing brand Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, says the 50-year-old company has thrived for so long because it does not strive for infinite growth and is aware of the expectations of its clients in terms of corporate responsibility modeling. “Creating the best product while causing the least harm is at the heart of what we do,” he says.
Stop chasing, start building
“Patagonia”conscious capitalism” is a perfect example of how to be sure that the interests of customers and the company align with sustainable development in the future. It’s not enough to just have a unique value proposition – you furthermore may need to adapt to customer needs and expectations.
Instead of viewing this relationship as one of chasing customers to fuel infinite growth, corporations need to take a more collaborative approach. When interests are truly aligned, delivering an offering that is authentically yours and truly needed is each deeply satisfying and profitable.