A competitive advantage is something that is unique to your business and often takes hard work to determine and even harder work to articulate effectively to current and prospective customers. It is what you sell and the answer to why, in a world filled with choices, a customer should buy from you?.

To create true competitive advantage, you need to know what your customers want, need and value. Then you need to let customers know what makes your company truly special and how being special translates into what they want. You may be proud about your organization’s unique and rich history, but what “specifically” does that have to do with adding value for your customer?

Airline passengers value on time arrivals and those few that are most profitable deliver on that value proposition. While other airlines continue to tout great food and comfort, passengers care most about timeliness. Volvo driver’s value safety and Volvo is constantly innovating to stay ahead of the safety curve. When it absolutely positively must be there the next day would you choose Airborne, USPS or FedEx?

Avoid bragging about strengths that are commonplace. While every business may claim good customer service, you might be able to say; “We will return all calls within one hour and can have someone at your location within two hours.”

While Ford says; “Quality is everyone’s job one,” can they prove it? What can your organization specifically say about quality? Were product returns or service complaints less than 2 percent last year?

Instead of saying we have a good reputation could you say something like: “Nine out of 10 new customers come to us as referrals.” Whatever you say must be true and you must stand ready to prove it.

Don’t compete on price, unless you’re Wal-Mart. You must discover competitive advantage by asking other than price questions such as: “What does your business do better than anyone else?” “What qualities does your product have that make it irresistible to customers?”

“We can save you money.” Everybody says that. If you can prove it, you’re on your way to dominating your field. The more specific you can be on the savings, the better. A great question to ask is:”How does your product or service, which is not the lowest-price alternative, save your customers money?”

What are some other deliverables that provide value to your customers, such as convenience, training, flexible financing, better guarantees, or faster delivery?

What statistics do you have to support your claims of superiority? What quantifiable statements can you use to help your customers understand your competitive advantages? Keep in mind that if you can’t reduce a competitive edge to numbers, you need to question if it really exists.

In making your list, keep in mind that a competitive advantage must be: objective, quantifiable, distinctive, credible and true. If your “short list” is too short, you may need to make some new decisions in order to create new competitive advantages that are important to your customer.

Because you don’t really want to be your industry’s low-cost company, success depends on communicating the point that product and service reliability and quality are money-savers. A low-cost laser printer that is always down isn’t a bargain and unreliable service can be worse than no service at all.

A seafood supplier charged more for his fish than competitors. However, unlike them, he delivered his product fresh every day and effectively articulated it had a longer shelf life for customers and saved them money due to lack of spoilage.

People realize that it makes sense to pay more if they get more of what they value. Hertz, the leading rental car company generally charges higher rates than competitors, but still remains the leader.

Hertz is offering something important to many customers. Cars equipped with a global positioning system (GPS), eliminate the worry of driving in an unfamiliar city, getting lost in the country or arriving late for meetings.

Hertz’s competitive advantage is worth the extra cost for it’s travelers. The reality is that customers will pay more to get more but you must tell them what extras you offer, things that can save them money, time, and aggravation.

Like Volvo with safety, Southwest with on time arrivals, or Hertz with GPS systems, competitive advantages must satisfy the values of your customers. They do not last forever, so you need to keep improving and building new ones that answer the most important question of all: Why should customers buy from you?

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