Slaughter The Competition Without Mercy

Com­pe­ti­tion is a “killer” for a lot of com­mod­ity busi­nesses. Doesn’t really mat­ter whether you mar­ket online or offline. If you sell a com­mod­ity prod­uct then chances are you com­pete for cus­tomers with hun­dreds of other businesses.

In the next few min­utes, I’m going to share with you a proven strat­egy to…

Out-Market, Out-Sell And Out-Profit...

… Just about any­one in your indus­try or busi­ness category.

Here’s a true story: Way back around 1907 a cer­tain com­pany (Pow­ell­ton) sold coal. There was noth­ing dis­tinc­tive about this com­pany. They did busi­ness like all the others.

They decided to cre­ate a new cus­tomer base in the mak­ers of stoves and ranges. But the com­pe­ti­tion was fierce. And com­pet­ing on price was a los­ing battle.

They were in the run­ning with six other coal com­pa­nies for a new account. The cus­tomer bought a car­load of coal from each of the candidates.

The cus­tomer did an analy­sis on each of the six car­loads of coal. After the results came in, the cus­tomer awarded the con­tract — with­out hes­i­ta­tion — to… Powellton.

Why?

After all, there really was noth­ing dif­fer­ent about them com­pared to the other coal com­pa­nies. Not on the sur­face anyway.

The only obvi­ous rea­son Pow­ell­ton got the account was because there was some­thing unusual about their coal. Some­thing they didn’t even know. There was.

When the cus­tomer did the analy­sis on Pow­ell­ton coal here’s what they dis­cov­ered: The coke in their coal had a very high car­bon con­tent. And low ash.

These char­ac­ter­is­tics gave Pow­ell­ton coke a heat­ing power that would melt a huge amount of iron. In addi­tion, the struc­ture of Pow­ell­ton coke sup­ported a huge amount of weight.

Powellton’s com­peti­tors had good coke. Theirs could melt eight or nine tons of iron to one ton of coke. On the other hand, Pow­ell­ton coke melted as high as fif­teen tons of iron to one ton of coke.

It cost the cus­tomer 80 to 90 cents to melt a ton of iron with ordi­nary coke. Using Pow­ell­ton coke only cost them 47 cents per ton.

Therein lies the “rub”.

Some­where within every com­mod­ity prod­uct lingers a dis­tinc­tive ben­e­fit to the cus­tomer. Find the ben­e­fit and you’ll posi­tion your prod­uct beyond the reach of the competition.

The key to find­ing such an advan­tage is…

Research

Once Pow­ell­ton dis­cov­ered their true advan­tage they owned the stoves and ranges mar­ket. The funny thing is, Pow­ell­ton stum­bled across their com­pet­i­tive advan­tage by sheer accident.

Here’s another true story: Let’s go back again to the turn of the 20th cen­tury. Thomas Beck was sales man­ager of Proc­tor and Gam­ble. They made Ivory soap.

Lis­ten to this: Soap was, at that time, sold to laun­dries by the bar­rel of so many pounds of weight. Bar­rels of soap were con­sid­ered to be pretty much the same. Sales were made almost entirely on price.

Thomas Beck decided to have Ivory soap flakes ana­lyzed. He com­pared those results with analy­sis made of com­pet­ing soap brands.

What he dis­cov­ered floored him.

Com­pet­ing brands of soap con­tained about 15 per­cent water to only 5 per­cent water for Ivory soap. Which meant that laun­dries buy­ing com­pet­ing brands of soap were pay­ing more for water. The same water they could get from the faucet.

Once again, with a lit­tle research…

A Distinctive Competitive Advantage...

… Was dis­cov­ered in a cut-​​throat com­mod­ity industry.

That dis­cov­ery helped to make Ivory soap a house­hold name. We still use it today. More than one hun­dred years later.

Now, let me share with you a prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of what you just learned.

Before you sit down to write an ad for your prod­uct… before you pick up the phone to make sales calls… and before you send sales­peo­ple out into the street… do a lit­tle research.

Fol­low these steps…

1. List all of the advan­tages and ben­e­fits your prod­uct deliv­ers. The obvi­ous ones.
2. Get ALL of the com­pet­ing prod­ucts and find out what their fea­tures and ben­e­fits are as com­pared to your product.
3. Deter­mine what one sin­gle ben­e­fit of your prod­uct stands out above all the other prod­ucts in your cat­e­gory. (I guar­an­tee you there is at least one.)
4. Cre­ate a mar­ket­ing and sales pro­mo­tion around that benefit.
5. Let every­one know about it.

You don’t have to get slaugh­tered by the com­pe­ti­tion. Odds are your prod­uct has some inher­ent advan­tage the competition’s prod­uct does not have. Find that advan­tage through some sim­ple research. Then, adver­tise that dis­tinc­tive advan­tage and prosper.

About the Author

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