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It might be hard to hear for young entrepreneurs and small businesses with ambitious growth plans, but not everyone is your customer. Differentiation starts with researching your expertise and market, then driving home the value you offer. In this sense, standing out is a matter of bringing more of your authentic self and your company to the table, no less in an effort to be all things to all people.
The danger of this latter approach is that of blending into the crowd. By the time a company’s product or service is valued by the market, it has already become a commodity, meaning you can compete on price alone.
Even established companies need to know when to pivot if their experience is no longer aligned with that of their customers. Adobe has transitioned from a highly successful business model of providing its suite of graphic design apps to a subscription-based model. It was part of a larger strategy to adapt to emerging customer behavior patterns in a cloud-based environment. After a torrent of initial criticism, the subsequent numbers are impressive: Adobe reported record revenue of $19.41 billion in the 2023 financial year and now has more than 33 million subscribers.
While Adobe’s move may have initially been considered risky, identifying the right customer for your business or remaining agile enough to adapt to customer preferences is the best way to build and maintain a sustainable business model.
Related: You Can’t Be Everything to Everyone, So Stop Trying
Know your expertise to deliver value
Faking it until you make it is terrible advice for new business leaders. Self-awareness is necessary to understand your unique value proposition and align it with what the customer actually needs. This allows you to focus on maximizing that value. Promising skills you have yet to possess usually occur when entrepreneurs chase the wrong customer, but the right customer doesn’t have to be elusive.
Remember, it’s one thing to invest resources into reaching customers who can afford your offering, but it’s another to make sure they’ll actually pay for it. While it should be obvious, the next part is key. Those same customers need to see value in your product or service. The concept of value can be subjective, but that’s exactly the point: the right customer is the one who appreciates what you offer them because you have differentiated them from the competition and it has satisfied a tangible need or desire.
Compare that to the temptation to chase big name accounts in B2B marketing – it can get blinding. Of course, it’s still true that we need to appeal to customer needs, probably more than ever in a world that expects speed and convenience. But as a CEO, when I visit a customer, I try to understand how we will align our interests to deliver value to them and gain benefits for ourselves. Aligning interests is beneficial to both parties.
How to invest in sustainability
When there is a natural affinity between what a company offers and what the customer needs, there is no sacrifice, only mutual benefit. Having a clear understanding of your experience gives you the confidence to say “I don’t know” when asked to go beyond its limits. This can save you a lot of unnecessary persuasion. A simple rule of thumb is that if you have to chase or convince customers, they are probably not the right customers for you.
Once interests are aligned, reputation can become a company’s form of marketing and stay true to the core values and skills that got you there AND brand name. Apple, for example, is renowned for turning its customers into evangelists. The tech giant avoids aggressively pursuing customers by constantly adapting to their needs and, in some cases, becoming a self-disruptor. They have built an identity by challenging the status quo.
So, don’t allow the unique part of your value proposition to be lost when potential sales data is shown. Stick to what you do well and trust that it can be repeated or evolved once a solid foundation is laid. Instead of telling customers what you think they want to hear, stay true to your authentic self and values to build credibility in the long run.
Related: Not all customers are good for business. Here’s how to find the ones that are.
Align, refine and double
When Amazon launched its first Kindle in 2007, it sold out within hours. Its genesis was Jeff Bezos’ identification of books as one of the five product categories with the greatest e-commerce potential. The online retail giant opened its famous bookstore in 1995, so by the time it developed an e-reader, it had already created an enthusiastic market.
The first Kindle looked clunky compared to devices of the time, but Amazon has never wavered from its primary purpose: serving people who love to read. Now, next-generation Kindles come with the X-ray feature, which allows readers to learn more about a character, topic, event, place, or any other term. Other features, like vocabulary-building flashcards, show how Amazon has continued to innovate to create the best reading experience.
In other words, play to your strengths but don’t overplay your hand. The founder of outdoor clothing brand Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, says the 50-year-old company has thrived for so long because it doesn’t pursue endless growth and is aware of its customer base’s expectations of modeling corporate responsibility. “Building the best product while causing the least harm is at the heart of what we do,” he says.
Stop chasing, start building
Patagonia’s “conscious capitalism” is a great example of keeping customer and business interests aligned for long-term sustainability. It’s not enough to just have a unique value proposition: you also need to be aligned with customer needs and expectations.
Instead of seeing this relationship as a search for customers to drive endless growth, companies need to take a more collaborative approach. When interests are truly aligned, there is both deep satisfaction and profitability in providing an offering that is authentically yours and genuinely needed.
Related: 6 Positive Changes That Come When You Start Showing Authenticity in Your Business