Every company claims their products are better than those of their competitors. Of course, this is only possible in a fictional place like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, “where all the children are above average.”
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that your product really is better.
Now ask yourself: How much better? Can you prove it? Does the difference matter to your customers? Is the competition truly so far behind that a large number of people would be willing to pay a premium for you? Also, are you able to maintain and demonstrate this superiority over an extended period of time?
“Better” is hard to sustain and even harder to prove to skeptical customers. Perhaps most importantly, you can’t rely on it long-term. New competitors and products can quickly reduce or even eliminate this advantage.
In my experience, chasing “better” tends to be a losing battle. What you should really focus on is being different.
When you carve out a unique, memorable niche, you instantly reduce the number of competitors—you may even be perceived by the market as the only solution to a particular problem.
And while “better” is often difficult if not impossible to quantify, “different” is easy to grasp. In fact, the farther you travel down a particular path, the more specialized and appealing you become.
Let’s say you have a troubling heart arrhythmia. You’re going to want to see a cardiologist over a general practitioner. And you’d ideally want an electrophysiologist—someone specializing in heart rhythm abnormalities. You as the patient have little to no way of knowing if the cardiologist is objectively a “better” doctor—but it doesn’t matter because the electrophysiologist is more likely to be able to solve your particular problem.
People often worry that specializing means losing their appeal to a large number of potential customers. That will absolutely happen, but it’s not a problem. You don’t have the capacity to serve everyone anyway, and specializing makes you recognizable and desirable to the customers who really matter—the ones you are able to help effectively and who are willing to pay for a solution to their problems.
When you zero in on a particular area of expertise, it becomes crystal clear to you and everyone else what you don’t do, and who you’re not for. That is precisely what you want. You’re not for everyone because no one is. You’re doing yourself and your customers a favor when you fully embrace this.
Don’t strive for better. Strive for different.
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