Product Differentiation

At this point, your product messaging has educated your prospect about your product categorization, description and the most compelling value.

Another question of interest to your prospect, which helps him/her separate your product from others is

How is the product different?

For example, the Salesforce service is different from traditional CRM applications because you don't have to install and manage the software.

Critical Success Factor

• Compare your product with the next best alternative

Here we take a page out of the value proposition handbook. In describing your uniqueness, you should compare your product to the next best alternative. This may seem counterintuitive.

If you compared your product against the worst alternative, you would have so much more to say. However, how many of your prospects are looking at the worst alternative? Yes, you may have more to say when comparing against a lesser alternative, but the value of your differentiation is perceived as much lower. Not only that. By comparing yourself with a lesser alternative, you invite the prospect to make the mental association with a lesser value alternative.

When you offer significant positive differentiation from the best alternative, the impact on the prospect is much greater.

Next step, messaging the product details - features versus benefits.

Talk with a product messaging expert now.
Call Applied Product Marketing at (650) 218-3104.