“Things are the way they are because someone changed the way they were.”
It’s tempting to sit back and complacently look at your business and deem it “competitive” – good enough to win a fair share of your target market.
Other companies offering similar products/services, at a similar price and offering the near same level of service makes it a daily grind to be “better than” those around you. Here’s the truth, it’s not a strategy that will move you forward at any real pace. Fixating on your ¼’ly results means that your company is reacting to current events in the marketplace, rather than creating the future it needs to survive and stand out.
“Don’t bother doing something unless you’re radically different from the competition.” – Richard Branson.
- Fundamentals will be revisited; everything is becoming too complicated.
- Information will become less visible on websites, replaced by ONE POINT PERSUASION. The ONE thing that, if accepted, will eliminate every objection or make them irrelevant.
- Relationships strengthen - Transactions weaken. People doing business with a business that they know, like and implicitly trust. Everything else is ignored.
- The single most important attribute any business can have is the ability to articulate their vision more clearly than others.
How does that relate to a business being remarkably different?
Let’s look at website design.
Traditionally, as much content has been crammed onto the site as possible. Small fonts, muted color, stock images don’t exactly set the world alight and have potential clients rushing to do business. We guess that’s due, in part, to wanting your business to appear knowledgeable and a desire to provide value. Let me spell it out for you – all that knowledge and value is processed by our logical, factual, left-side of brain. First, though, we process things intuitively, imaginatively and creatively with the right-side of our brain. It feels right and then we look at the data, not the other way around. So, function following form would suggest that we capture the imagination, interest and desire first with Bold typography, vivid layers of color, ultra minimalism and enough ‘white space’ to let the message breathe.
Got some information you need to share? Then you write a paragraph of compelling text that arouses curiosity and offer to email the pdf in return for contact details.
DO NOT INCLUDE THE INFORMATION ON YOUR WEBSITE. Please!
It’s a similar story with the narrative.
Content has long been taking one single idea and elaborating on it until the message is delivered. Five hundred words, a thousand words? Just to emphasize the point and add credibility. Problem is, the more points we make in an attempt to persuade, the less likelihood there is of doing just that. More often, the complicated things aren’t complicated because they’re important; they’re complicated to make us think they’re important. Big difference.
- Keep it short. Keep it simple. It’s essential that your message is crystal clear.
- Your company’s ability to persuade effectively will supersede EVERY other attribute it has. Every single one.
- When your business gets the attention, it better know what to do with it.
- Go stand in the corner, those C-Suite Executives that said “we sell them our stuff”.
- Transactions belong in the past, or at the fast-food outlet.
- Relationships are the future.
That’s a whole post on its own – and your company’s biggest single point of remarkable difference. Not for now, but subscribe to this blog and you’ll get immediate notification when it lands.
Thanks for reading!
