How Distinctive Is Your Differentiator?

There’s an event on Thursday in Cape Town aimed at creating a community for wannabe tech start-ups, the name of which gives you the gist; Silicon Cape.

Explaining the concept to me, one of the attendees gave an interesting example of a previous attempt to provide hub-like support for such firms. Microsoft recently held a conference for around 50 local companies that developed on their platform.

Apparently the pick of the sessions was one where the presenter asked each firm to nip out and write down what made them distinctive in the marketplace.

When back in the main theatre, there was a quick-fire round-the-room for each group to give their top distinction.

It seemed that everyone cited something about their product.

The facilitator then posed the question, if everyone was heralding the same thing in the marketplace, then how could any of them truly be distinctive?

All agreed that they must go away and choose a real differentiator.

I wonder if we solution sellers were to ask our customers from where they thought our true distinction came, whether it would both tally with what we keep telling our prospects and also, crucially, be genuinely different from what our competition say?