So! What makes you so special?

Nothing turns me off more than the scramble to the bottom line. No matter how low you go, there is always someone else out there willing to beat you up. The result? Low prices, lousy products and horrible service. One out of three of those characteristics is attractive to customers, but sooner or later, expectations drop so low that customers are no longer interested. Sadly, it’s happening all around us. Ultimately, it is self-defeating.

So what can we do about that? How about great products, fantastic service and reasonable prices? The odds have now improved with two out of three winners in the customer-satisfaction department. Some people will consider reasonable prices to be too high (“I could do much better on-line!”). Others will view reasonable prices as… well… reasonable. A few might even consider them a bargain.

I think, though, that if the product quality is excellent and the service is great, that, even though there may be some moaning and groaning over price, overall customer satisfaction will be high.When I think about my own customer base, they feel to me like a growing family. Sure, product quality has to be excellent, but it’s more the relationships formed that keeps customers coming back and spreading the word. Without even necessarily being conscious about it, satisfied customers will do much to promote your business.

Good relationships are genuine. A national gas station chain (let’s call them Grampa’s Gas to protect the not-too-innocent) has instituted a strict policy (as far as I am able to observe) of forcing all of their employees to accost every customer that walks in the door with a cheerful “Welcome to Grampa’s Gas! How can I help you?” I’m all for positive image, but this is just painful to watch, especially when you’re seventh in line enduring the countdown of ‘Welcome to Grampa’s Gas’ incantations. I’ve actually taken to doing preemptive strikes of the chant before they can utter those words for the ten-thousandth time this week, and we all have a very human, good-natured laugh. My point being that customers are very discerning between what is hype and what is genuine. They don’t necessarily need you to be their best friend and actually might get turned off by such familiarity. But they do want to know they are being heard and want to hear from you in a way they can understand about the business at hand.

Good relationships are also founded on trust, and in this uncertain world, that trust is quite valuable to your customers. Weighing a trusting relationship in the scales against bottom-line pricing, most customers will favor the relationship over the price. In my experience, if price becomes the deciding factor, it’s best to point out the benefits of what you have to offer and then let them go with your blessings if they choose to bottom feed. Not just in my own business, but in my colleagues’ businesses as well, I’ve seen people come crawling back after discovering the joyless world of pursuing the bottom line.

None of this is much more than common sense. In fact, if we all would take some time to consider what we value most in our own pursuit of goods and services, we could form a quite useful blueprint for running our own businesses.

One aspect of running a business, though, often eludes us. Especially when starting out, there is a real temptation of trying to fit the mold of our client’s expectations for our type of business. To an extent, such familiarity is useful. The problem is we can become too generic, even if we do generic quite well. We become unmemorable with no distinguishing features. We need to be very proficient at meeting normal expectations, but at some point we need to do some deep soul searching and examine what it is we do that is unique and outstanding, and then be sure to make our customers aware of that.

It’s okay, even necessary, to be interesting and unique in some way. It makes it much easier to stand out and to be remembered. Strangely, there seems to be a lot of discomfort surrounding this issue. I know this from my work in helping businesses develop a marketing identity. There is often a kind of shyness when it comes to standing out. But it is also liberating to acknowledge what you do well.

This can take the form of unique products or services, or perhaps it’s in some other ordinary aspect of your business that you seem to do particularly well. Playing to such strengths can only help, not hinder your business. Anything we do really well becomes a strong selling point and augments what is generally expected from our business. It gives us an interesting shape that draws attention and makes us easy to remember.When I walk my dog, she meets many other dogs, and the way they react to one another varies wildly. Sometimes they completely ignore one another, or one is interested and one is not, and then there is that perfect match. The tails start wagging, and the energy and excitement is so obvious.

In trying to be everything to everyone, we can become uninteresting. I believe that by allowing our strengths to show, we will develop strong relationships with those clients whose needs our strengths serve well.

So! What makes you so special?