DJ Khaled Got it Wrong. Why Being the Best is Killing Your Sales

Everyone wants to be the best.

The best dressed.

The best speaker.

The best service provider.

What does being the best mean? Against which measuring stick are you able to quantify that?

If you provide a service, who wouldn't want the best? No one wants to buy a bad service.

And you didn't grow your business to this point offering a bad solution.

The problem with being the best. It's easy to duplicate.

Being the best means you're competing to excel at what's already been done.

For every service, there are thousands of providers offering the same thing.

The options to become the best are limited to improving the features of the service.

You strive to make it faster, cheaper, simpler for the customer. The value of the service appeals to the customer's short term desires. This is the low hanging fruit that will have your customers shopping around for the best deal.

This approach cheapens your value. You become a commodity in the mind of your customer. 

This reduces your status with them.

Dictionary.com defines different as "not alike in character or quality; distinct in nature."

Different implies the nature of being set apart or unexpected. There is no indication of good, bad or best when you are different.

This creates a chance for you to set the bar. It opens up the category for you to become the only.

When you are different, you claim a lane only you can own. You are distinct and create the element of being either a good or bad option.

Different is hard to copy. Only can't be duplicated.

To become the only you have to identify how you are different.

It's already there, you have to uncover it. Let's find your difference.

Review your processes and document it. Take hard look at your business and ask yourself the following:

Is this something that I want to do?

Is this something that I have to do?

Is this something that I enjoy doing?

Gather feedback. Interview past clients, review testimonials. Create two columns; one for positive and the other for negative reviews. Look for trends in the feedback. Highlight the repeat statements. Here's a tip, your difference can be found in what your customers say.

Market research. Look at what your competitors are doing. Does your messaging look the same as theirs? Find ways for you to be different.

Stay true to you. A brand has two factors; the unique value you bring and the distinct way you provide that value. This is not the time to shy away from those subtleties that make your brand distinct. Lean into them and wrap the unique value that you provide.

I used this same approach with a recent client who was launching a new art supply product.

Building her strategy required me to uncover the unique value of her product. She was launching a new product in a saturated market. I had to figure out how her art supplies were different from the many others.

I positioned her business as the only representation first art supply company. The key insight leveraged came from the market research. Most art supplies companies treated representation as an afterthought. Her company puts representation at the forefront of everything they do.

Use the Communicate Your Unique Value template to take your business through a similar process.

To increase your sales, your small business must be the only choice for your customers. They have many options and thousands of marketing messages per day.

The way to win their business is to own a space in their mind. When they are ready for your service, the goal is to be the only option they have in mind.

S.I.G.H.T.® Seeing is a newsletter for diverse founders. The visionaries who change the world with businesses that choose not to accept the status quo.

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