When I started down the path of my business and leadership journey, I learned the concept of competitive advantage. How are you better than your competitors? The theory goes that if you highlight your competitive advantages, then customers will be drawn to you over your competitors.
While it is true that consumers look for organizations that give them the best value and the better options, the flaw with competitive advantage thinking surfaces when we neglect finding out what customers are looking for.
If the areas in which you outshine your competition are not important to your consumer, highlighting your advantages will not help bring in more customers. Did you catch that? The goal is not that you are better. The goal is that you are better at what is important to your customer. The problem is that we rarely know what is important to the customer. We think we know, but most often we don’t truly know why a customer is choosing us over a competitor, or vice versa.
The real key to growing your customer base is to determine what matters to your customers, then become that. This journey of becoming what your customers need you to be has to align with who you truly are or can become, otherwise there will be an authenticity gap that will torpedo all your efforts.
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