Six steps to differentiating your solutions

Aargh! Six weeks to launch, and so much to do. The solutions management folks have spent months putting together the new offering, and now we've got about 87 things to do to get ready on the marketing side. Press release...internal webinar for the sales team...customer presentation...special briefings for the top account leads...white paper...update the public site with descriptions...collateral for the trade show. Oh yeah, and all the social media stuff, too: some blog posts, tweet schedule, maybe a few videos. 

The real challenge, of course, is getting anyone to care. Your customers are inundated with shiny new offers every day of the week, and they pretty much tune them all out. If they're actually looking for a new solution, sure, they might want to chat or at least check out your stuff, but otherwise...forget it.

Unless, of course, you actually make the new offer relevant, compelling, and truly evocative of real value. We all say our new solutions are important and different, but the sad reality is that the vast majority are me-too offerings that fail to connect or excite.

Some of this is inevitable in a world of intense competition. But a great deal reflects that fact that we simply don't put in the time or energy to identify and communicate the true differentiators that actually matter to prospective buyers. We get so caught up in cranking out the stuff of the launch process that we fail to step back and methodically work through why our solutions are better than those of the competition, and how to connect those differentiation dots to the issues our customers care about the most.

It's not rocket science, but it does take some effort, and a formal process helps. Over at Solutions Insights, we've spent a lot of time with companies that do this the right way (as well as many that don't!). Based on that experience, we've put together a quick six-step guide for defining and demonstrating clear and relevant differentiators for solutions that can make or break the launch process. 

Six Steps to Differentiating Your Solutions Offerings

We'd love to know what works for you!