This is pretty good

I read this post last week and thought it was very relevant to anyone looking to maximize the effectiveness of their messages to their potential customers.  Remember some of these things you may already be doing, but are how are you telling your customers that you do?

 

4 Ways You Can Close the Gap Like Apple

Friday, Sep 12, 2014

C. Lee Smith

C. Lee Smith is the President/CEO of Sales Development Services.

Another Apple keynote has come and gone. One of the biggest lessons sales managers and leaders can take from the latest one is how Apple closes the gap. The gap I’m talking about is how they analyze their competitor’s strengths and neutralize them – and sometimes even turn them into THEIR strengths. You can question whether these are innovations or just playing catch up, but you can’t question they’re attempting to close the competitive gaps where they exist.

Apple is a company that deliberately strives for excellence through attention to detail, but that certainly doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on all of the good ideas. And neither do you.

Imagine how much easier it would be to sell if you could turn the tables on your competitors – making your competitive weaknesses into your strengths?

In their latest keynote, Apple showed us four examples of how it’s done:

1.) Close the consumer demand gap. One size rarely fits all. Apple used give you an iPhone in one size and expected you to be happy with that. Now there are three different sizes. The reason? Android phones come in bigger sizes and have struck a chord with people who like to watch videos and use them more as handheld computers. With the introduction of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Apple is taking away one of their competitor’s advantages.

How you can turn the tables: Stop selling your advertisers what you want to sell them. Help them buy what they want to buy. Ask yourself what new twists can you offer to better suit your advertisers’ needs. Larger banner sizes? Selling by Share of Voice instead of Run of Site? 15 second or two-minute spots? New discount tiers in your pricing structures? Better yet, ask your advertisers.

2.) Close the feature gap. Android smartphones have had NFC (near-field communications) chips for years. In an ideal world, these chips allow the instant transfer of data between devices that are close to each other. You could even pay for a cab ride with an Android phone with that fancy NFC chip, but not an iPhone. Beyond that, most people saw little value in an NFC chip – nice feature, limited benefit. Rather than just roll out an NFC chip in their latest iPhones, Apple created a whole new online payment system called Apple Pay. The promise is of a safer, more convenient way to buy just about anything – whether online or using that NFC chip at the store.

How you can turn the tables: The best way to close the feature gap is to sell benefits (easier, safer way to pay for things) instead of features (NFC chip). Look at the products you sell – are they just “solutions” in search of a problem? Hint: your problem of needing to make more money is not your customer’s problem.

3.) Close the gender gap. It has long been rumored that Apple was working on a smart watch. So their competitors rushed to beat them to the punch so they could be “first to market.” Samsung, for example, had already released six different smart watches before Apple released one. The problem with almost all of these watches was they were manly and techie in design. Apple attempted to close the gender gap by releasing two smart watches – one for larger wrists and one for smaller wrists. They also announced a version in gold and fashionable wrist bands that were more desirable to the female set.

How you can turn the tables: If you try to serve everybody, you’ll end up serving nobody well, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a big tent. Are your competitors more popular with one gender than you? Ask yourself if your content is more heavily weighted toward men (sports, for example) or women? Are the colors, design and wording of your marketing pieces causing them not to resonate with members of one gender or the other? Are your salespeople more successful in dealing with decision makers of one gender versus the other? Find out, then close the gap.

4.) Close the generational gap. Because of their higher price points, Apple had been losing some younger buyers to less expensive Android devices. Some of the features on their new Apple Watch – like animated emoji, hand-drawn pictograms, and sharing your heartbeat seemed gimmicky to people like me (or anyone over 40), but my teenage niece will go nuts over them.

How you can turn the tables: Are your media products alienating Millenials? How about Generation Z? If you’re stuck with advertising hearing aids and retirement plans to Baby Boomers, that’s not a recipe for long-term prosperity. You have a whole sandbox of digital toys. Use them to make yourself (even more) relevant to “the kids.” They’ll (hopefully) have high paying jobs someday. So get ‘em while they’re young.

And (of course) there’s one more thing…

4+1.) Close the perception gap. Since the death of Steve Jobs, Apple has been dealing with a perception the company is no longer innovative. So much so, one of their senior VPs exclaimed “can’t innovate anymore, my ass!” at a previous keynote. This perception is all too happily exploited by their competitors. Even if some of the new things Apple announced at their keynote are only modest successes, they are attempting to close what they believe to be a gap between their level of innovation and the perception of merely riding on what Steve Jobs built years ago.

How you can turn the tables: If you are a traditional media these days, you are perceived by too many as old, slow and dying. If you’re a digital media, you’re perceived by too many as unproven and risky. But don’t be fooled by the generalities coming from pundits and alarmists. My company recently did an audience study for one local newspaper publisher. Although a fair percentage of readers felt their content was biased or could easily be found somewhere else, even greater numbers felt the newspaper was convenient and a good value for the money because they were “the leader in local news.” That perception gap is there, but it’s probably not as big as you might think. Don’t just ask your fans what they think of you. Ask everyone else and then compare the two sets of responses.

This whole process starts with being honest with yourself and critically analyzing your products – even if you have to bring in an independent third-party to do it for you. Then, analyze where you’re beating yourselves. A lot of media companies can’t get out of their own way and can’t seem to deploy any new idea without some level of drama. Stop being your own worst enemy.

Next, be honest about how and where your competition is clobbering you. Hint: your REAL competition isn’t the station down the street or the publication across town. It’s named Google, Facebook, Pandora, Groupon and ReachLocal. Turn their strengths into YOUR strengths by closing the gap.

By eliminating the negative and accentuating the positive (YOUR strengths over your competitors), you’ll find real profitability. And Apple is one of the most profitable companies of them all.