A few weeks ago I mentioned how differentiation for many small businesses starts with their origin story – it’s often the driving force or catalyst for starting their business, and can be one of the first things that early customers/clients remember.

While your story can often help kickstart the differentiation, but ultimately the services or products you offer will be what keeps things going (and keep folks coming back), so it’s important that differentiation doesn’t end there.

Over the years, I’ve seen firsthand those stories help shape services for local businesses in particular – usually in identifying something lacking in service from others with the same local alignment (offering the same services to the same subset of customers/clients).

I mention this in a previous post, but you can think of differentiation as a way of aligning along a decision axis – that is, aligning how you differentiate along features or benefits that matter most to your customers when they’re deciding on services or products.

Your story and values can be one of those decision axes, but as mentioned above, the services and products – the follow through – must meet or exceed expectations in order for things to progress or be sustainable.

Service/Product Differentiation Can Be Simple

What I’ve noticed over the years is that differentiation can be simple, subtle items that ultimately matter the most to a customers/client base.

Something as simple as better communication and keeping a proper/precise schedule can be a difference-maker. This seems extremely simple and basic business etiquette, but you’d be surprised how often this happens (or doesn’t happen).

This, of course, is always relative to what others are doing in your market (more on that below) — if communication is strong or is the standard across your industry, then you might not stand out as much.

The idea here is that differentiating on small things over time can often accumulate to building a larger difference in the eyes of your customers/clients.

Common Sources Of Frustrations From Your Target Audience

One source of differentiation can be from common complaints about services or products offered by others in the same industry/area.

These would be frequent/repeated sources of frustrations from others in your area or within your target market.

This isn’t meant to put down your competitors, but it does give you some ideas on where to start in improving your products and services to make them different – and relieve frustrations within your market.

An Example Story From The Past

While I can’t get into the exact details for this particular client, but before they started their small business they noticed many frustrations within a local market.

From poor service, shoddy products, low installation standards — all of these frustrations gathered over years in a particular industry (an important industry where all of those matter even more).

Tired of seeing this on repeat, a business was born to set out creating a better – and more reliable/consistent experience. The origin story was much more deeply entwined in the experience, but the better quality products, proactive customer support and highest installation standards lead to a better, more popular business in their area over time.

There are many more examples from over the years, but the key question to ask yourself is: beyond your story, what are you doing to make your services and/or products better – and different – than others that offer the same services/products?