HOW ARE YOU DIFFERENT AND CAN YOU PROVE IT?

HOW ARE YOU DIFFERENT AND CAN YOU PROVE IT?

THE TWIN CHALLENGES OF DIFFERENTIATION

If you are a nuclear reactor engineer who specializes in building personalized fail-safe thermonuclear radiation prevention kits, you probably don’t need to worry about differentiating yourself from your competitors — because there probably aren’t any.

But if you’re a computer programmer, a dental hygienist, or an aspiring ballet dancer, you’ve got a problem and it’s a big one. You need to figure out just what it is that you do that no one else does — or no one else can do nearly as well as you — so that the consumer marketplace readily sees you as the only clear choice when shopping for certain products or services.

If you are able to differentiate yourself from others, you absolutely must do it. There’s far too much competition in the pool of available jobs to rely on mediocrity.

If you’re not able to find something that clearly differentiates you from others, you’ll need to spend some time searching for it. Think about all of the skills, talents, and abilities you have and how they are used — under your conscious control — to deliver a particular product or service. Is there anything you can do with your unique talents that can be transformed into a clearly and strongly perceived benefit on the part of the consumer? What level of effort would you have to expend to make this happen? Or have you concluded that, in your case, it’s impossible?

The good news is that it’s possible for just about everyone to find something that can be transformed into a highly differentiating business attribute. The bad news is that once you’ve found your distinctive attributes, you still need to develop a marketing strategy to “sell it” (i.e., make it attractive) to the consumer.

You must find a way to address both challenges: your point of distinction and your point of attraction. You can do this by re-examining your talents and finding ways to package your work output that best leverages the very best talents you have.