Growth comes from the intersection of market needs and organization capabilities. The sweet spot is where your company’s strengths meet customer requirements better or differently than anyone else. The only caveat is that you must genuinely deliver more value through those capabilities.
If your company has superior customer service capabilities, that’s great. But answer the question “what do you do differently than others do –or say they do –in your space?” If the answer is nothing, then you have a hard road ahead. For example, I tend to find most community banks compete on customer service. They check their abilities by hiring mystery shoppers to evaluate service. Interesting isn’t it, that the exact same criterion are evaluated by mystery shoppers at different community banks? The lists are interchangeable. If that is so, how can one be better than another at customer service? They can’t!
If you want to honestly evaluate capabilities, ask yourself these three questions:
1. What capabilities do we have that are unique in the market?
2. How strong is each capability? Give it a grade from A to F.
3. What capabilities would allow us to better satisfy our most profitable customers?
Once you have answered these questions, you can determine what your value proposition and corresponding selling message is and be sure you will deliver on it so they keep coming back to YOUR business!