…Again, wish I would have said this.

Funny, I’ve got a thread going right now on my site about great customer service, …my previous post to this one I trackbacked… and my PERCEPTION about my recent purchase is so high now, based on the EXPERIENCE I went through, that I really wonder if the product I bought really matters anymore!

Say BillD, I’d like a copy of that Special Report, this topic is very interesting to me… …but you don’t have a link to your name… …do you have a site?

It bugs me that I read your posts and think, “When did John read my stuff?”. Seriously, the synchronicity of aligned thinking is both gratifying and eerily strange.

But let me add something I didn’t read in your great post. While your ‘simple formula’ for expressing what I do (for) someone is ‘right on’, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be truly better than my competitors at doing it. Sure, I may be better at communicating my raison d’etre — as my prospect defines it, but my ‘experience’ may not be all that different or better than what my competitiors are offering.

Of course, there IS a way to stand out effectively. Manage the customer’s EXPERIENCE.

How? By managing our behaviors, we create IMPRESSIONS that our prospects use to form a PERCEPTION about us / our business. And since their perception becomes their REALITY (subjective is still real, no?) about us, their reality encourages an appropriate BEHAVIOR from them — they’ll PREFER and BUY FROM us over other less ‘distinctive’ firms.

The ‘commodity’ status is, as you point out, a deadly place to be in any business.

So in addition to learning to state why we’re different . . . we must also learn to practice and ‘manage’ our prospects and clients experiences with us so they come away from every contact believing that, because of all the experiences we create, “All things being equal . . . this firm’s not just equal . . . it’s BETTER!”

I have a Special Report on this very topic if you or anyone is interested in seeing the ‘details’ of how to effect this strategy.

Keep up the great postings!