Many business leaders I meet still believe the only way to win is to be dramatically different from the competition. They want their product to have every bell and whistle imaginable. They chase constant redesigns and add features to stay ahead in a race for “most impressive.” On paper, that logic sounds right. In the market, it often fails.
There is another strategy that is less glamorous but highly effective: parity.
Be just as good as your competitors in most of the things your customers care about, and better in a critical few, and you gain a real advantage. Match your competitors, point for point, on most decision criteria, and those factors drop out of the decision. Customers stop weighing them because there is no difference.
That clears the way to focus attention on the handful of areas where you truly stand apart. The challenge is to know which attributes matter most to your ideal customer, then position those strengths as the deciding factors. At the same time, reframe your competitors’ differences as less important for your target buyer. The goal is not to win 20 comparisons. It is to make 17 irrelevant and dominate the three that remain.
An Example From the Sales Floor
Years ago, I was working with a cellular phone company. Customers would come in to buy a phone, and the salespeople had been trained to deliver a scripted pitch. They would rattle off every feature: memory, camera resolution, special modes, advanced settings, new materials, even functions buried three menus deep. Inevitably, a customer would stop them and ask, “Do you have something simpler? I just need to make calls, send texts, and take a decent photo.” The salesperson thought they were adding value by listing every feature. What they created was confusion and the sense that the customer would pay for things they did not need.
A parity-plus approach keeps your investment focused.
You match competitors in the areas where customers expect equality (price, quality, service, reliability), then you channel resources into two or three attributes where you can be unmatched for your target customers. Those become the centerpiece of your marketing.
That is competing with clarity. Do this well and you will shorten sales cycles, protect margin, and win the right customers more often.
If you’re serious about strengthening your organization, I invite you to join me and the Entrepreneurs’ Organization with Align for this upcoming session. You’ll leave with practical ideas you can apply the very same day.
📅 September 11th
🕚 11:00 AM EST
