By Peter Bell

Why Would I Buy From YOU?!

Posted At : November 11, 2008 2:30 PM | Posted By : Peter Bell
Related Categories: Business
Back in the day, I used to run an ad agency developing marketing materials for small to mid sized businesses. After a while, it became a little dispiriting. For a while I was doing a lot of marketing work for printing firms in Houston (it gave us the vertical specialization to know their business and they were good potential resellers to get us other marketing gigs as they often dealt with marketing contacts at small to mid sized companies). We'd always ask "what makes you different - why would I buy from you", and time after time after time they'd all say "fair price, good quality and personal service" - without ever having specific pricing, quality or service stories worth talking about.

I think it can be the same with web shops. I mean, why would I buy from YOU specifically? We're lucky in that we have the software product line and I've got a fairly good reputation now from conference presentations, published articles and the like. We also have a unique process for building web apps quicker and more cost effectively and are continuing to invest in our systems to improve the quality and productivity of our solutions.

What are your thoughts? What differentiates the business you work for? Vertical industry experience? The quality of your devs (what about them?)? Processes? Systems? Testimonials?

I'd be interested in hearing how you differentiate yourself - whether as a company or as a freelancer and what you find "sells" and what doesn't!

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For Clark and I, we try to separate ourselves by adding a lot of value to the client's vision. The world is filled with people who will simply implement the client's vision; that's not our strategy. We like to shoulder up with our clients, make them as much a part of our company as we become part of theirs - we like to help them shape their vision and, in a way, help steer the company in a more successful direction as best we can.

Clark uses a great saying, "The best way to make a million dollars is to make our clients two million dollars." I always feel that this codifies our vision and our desire to fully align ourselves not just with our clients, but with our "partners."

That why they buy from us.
# Posted By Ben Nadel | 11/11/08 4:04 PM
Nice :-)
# Posted By Peter Bell | 11/11/08 4:06 PM
Thanks :) I recently had a meeting about our company vision and what our values are, so I'm a bit jazzed up right now. As such, your post kind struck a chord.
# Posted By Ben Nadel | 11/11/08 4:12 PM
There are thousands of web developers. I think you need to specialize and be the best in the world at one thing. For ourselves we want to be leaders in the wine industry. A wine store or winery wants an ecommerce site and we specialize in that industry. They should use us because we know their industry, we know about selling wine online and all that entails.

We use to try to sell any website we could to anyone with money, but I think the days of not having a focus are coming to an end.
# Posted By Andrew Kamphuis | 11/11/08 5:38 PM
@Andrew,

I agree with you. At my previous job, we did a ton of law firm web sites, CMS, and case management type applications. I think the clients truly valued that we had such depth of experience and were familiar with how law firms worked and what problems to except from attorneys. At the end of the day, it's so useful to be able to speak the same language.
# Posted By Ben Nadel | 11/11/08 5:44 PM
This is tough for many companies; who never define their "Difference" from the start and then do not foster a culture where employees know what makes this company great. Traditionally I've just faked my way through business and was pretty lucky that word of mouth kept me busy. I was a subject matter expert (first ColdFusion, now Flex) and most of the time, prospects were already sold on me before they contacted me. Without a doubt there were things we did good, such as working within budgets and staying on schedule. I was never good at using those as selling points, though.

Today, DotComIt is building a line of commercial flex components. We've thought long and hard about why people would care about them. We make easy to use interface components for Flex Developers. Our goal is to make the components click and drag simple. We do this by following the conventions of the Flex Framework and providing comprehensive documentation and examples. Most of all, we save the developer time when they compare buying from us vs building the component themselves. By offering a developer edition at no cost, developers can even prove to themselves, their clients, and their boss that our component will work in the context of their application. That's why our customers will care about us.

I'm still working on the best way to present the pitch, but that is the gist of it.

Two good books about this sort of topic: Good to Great & Building a Better Business Brain
# Posted By Jeffry Houser | 11/12/08 9:21 AM
1) We don't sell anything from China - higher quality products
2) Live customer service people who are our internal employees who know what we sell - no call center that only knows what they read on the web site.
3) Good Faith guarantee - since we sell Catholic stuff, we guarantee that what we sell is actually in line with Catholicism.
4) Over 200 articles about Catholicism which will jump to over 500 next year - we aren't just trying to sell stuff, we actually want our shoppers to be well educated.
5) A weekly e-newsletter that isn't just full of product to sell but includes articles of interest to Catholics.
# Posted By Ian | 11/12/08 2:48 PM
It's been a long time since I've read it, but this made me think of a book by Harvey Mackay called "Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive." Again, it's been a long time, but if I remember correctly, he used to be an envelope salesman. Think about it, envelopes. How do you differentiate _that_? I remember he did a great job of sharing what he did to be successful in the business. There was so much more to it though. It touched on customer service, management, just about every facet of the business.

One thing that stuck with me was "know your enemy" or competition. Knowing that was just as important as knowing your customer.

I'm going to have to dig out that old book, blow the dust off of it and give it a good read again.
# Posted By Steve Withington | 11/13/08 12:30 AM
I think you're right about reputation. It's about establishing your expertise in a specialization. As information continues to multiply and divide itself, it's increasingly difficult for people to keep up, causing a need for specialization. It all comes back to the human aspect of trust and confidence in one's ability. As a freelance, I find that this is the key differentiator - demonstrated competence and skills confidence.
# Posted By Daryl James | 11/13/08 12:03 PM
I'm a programmer, I get sales people to do that. However all things being equal it sometimes comes down to your loss or their loss, either my portfolio appeals to the customer or not.
# Posted By owen | 11/21/08 4:52 PM
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