What is your competitive advantage?

When faced with this question there are many standard responses including things like quality service, quality products, on time delivery, experienced, and many more.  I recently saw Jaynie Smith speak and she would tell you all of these things sound like blah, blah, blah.  These are the things you must have to be in business, not competitive advantages.  Competitive advantages have three definitive characteristics - they are measurable or definable, they are true, and they must be unique to your company.  Instead of us saying you should hire us because we have a wealth of experience, we say Traube Tent has over 150 years of tenting experience on staff or we say Traube Tent installed over 1 million square feet of tents in 2010.  Instead of saying we have great quality, we say almost 90% of our clients have referred us to family or friends and over 90% said they would refer us if the opportunity arises.  There are countless ways to define your competitive advantages so be creative.  Some of the best ways we have found is to let the client tell you what your competitive advantages are.  This can be done with double blind client research.  Double blind means that a third party administers the survey and you do not know which client said what.  This helps ensure that you will get an honest answer or at least come closer to the truth.  Brainstorming sessions with employees, clients, friends, and business associates are another great way to come up with competitive advantages.  We spent about 4 hours conducting some brainstorming and came up with over 75 competitive advantages in addition to the dozens we discovered through our double blind research.  Check out our newly redesigned website at www.traubetent.com to see a different competitive advantage on every page.