Lesson Fifty: What Business Are You In?

When I ask most business people to describe their business, they talk about it as an extension of what they sell. It makes perfect sense. Right?

A company that makes software is a software company.

A company that provides plumbing services, are Plumbers.

A person who sells accounting is an Accountant.

Wrong. Your business is not really about what you sell at all. In fact, what you sell is completely secondary to the true nature of your business. The product or service your business delivers is simply the means of exchanging the thing that you really sell.

You don’t believe me. I can see you shaking your head.

Here’s why.There are many, many, many companies just like yours that sell, more or less, the identical thing you sell.How can you possibly expect the customer to differentiate between you and your competitor if all you can offer them is a lousy category?

So,that’s not it.

The thing you really sell is that unique, point-of-difference that makes your business special. So the question is, what’s special about your business? What do you do that’s unique or interesting or novel or against convention?

Whatever that is, it is the thing that you truly sell.

Are you friendly?

Revolutionary.

Expert.

Cool.

Intelligent.

Technological.

Kooky.

Caring.

Worldly.

Is your approach radically different from your competitors? Are your hours better? Your turn around faster?

There needs to be something wonderfully unique to get in the game, otherwise your business is just another one of those dozens of dreary companies, selling the same thing for, more or less, the same price. And why would you want to be that?

Sometimes businesses try to get around the fact that they are the same, by claiming a difference that isn’t really there. “The best service in the industry,” they say. But, here’s the catch: That special thing that you are, that unique point-of-difference, you actually have to be that thing. You can’t sell a lie. If you don’t give the best service, you can’t claim to. If you’re not fast, you’ll be found out.

Liars are bad people.No one spends their money with bad people more than once.

To achieve difference you must nurture it in halls and offices, and hearts of your employees. Nurture kookiness, or loyalty, or cool, or expert, or revolutionary, or whatever it is that separates you from the rest of that aimless pack.

Your business is not defined by the product you sell, or the service you provide. The thing you truly sell exists in the heart and imagination. So what yours?