What Your “Take-Away” Says About What Sets You Apart

The hardest question any small business has to answer is "What sets me apart?"  Most products and services are not new or unique – no matter how much we like to think they are.  That means that our customers choose us for a reason.  Those reasons are not always as obvious as we’d like to think.

There are several ways to measure that elusive something; one is to ask the standard branding questions that we’ve all become used to…"When you think (insert company or product here) you think…(insert some stupid adjective here).

There is another way to measure brand and value and the best salespeople know what I’m talking about – it’s called the "take-away."  This is when you start actually telling your customer that they don’t need something, you take the option away from them – and let them think about that for a minute.  What generally happens is that people just don’t like having things taken away, and the intensity of that reaction will tell you just how valuable that take-away is in terms of value.

The best example of this lately has been the "Whopper Freakout" – This is where Burger Kind picked a couple locations in Nevada and literally took the Whopper off the menu to see what happens.  You’ve seen the commercial and the web site has even MORE good stuff.

Nother wonderful exploration of the "take-away" is found in a new book I’m readingf "Reality Sells."  The questions that asks "If you suddenly closed your doors today, what would people miss most?"

That got me really thinking.  I want to know what would people miss most about me?  What would people miss most from the clients I work with.  Think about that one.