Navigating the Sea of Sameness

Is the Sea Of Sameness phenomenon stunting your growth potential and sinking your bottom line?

Please indulge me and let me share my pet peeve.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of every department store I shop in wanting to sell me their credit card! Including, for example, Walgreens…

Really? Do I really need your Walgreens credit card to buy Jergens lotion for my dry skin? Really? AAAAAAAARGGGGG!

These store clerks can see I already have a card, because I’m paying with one. And yet, they insist on trying to sell me theirs.

When I don’t apply for their card, they up look at me with big doe eyes, and make me feel like I am somehow un-American or something.

Do you know what this barrage of irritating marketing behavior has done?

It has led me to promising myself I will NEVER sign up for such a card, from any department store, for the rest of my life…ever!

Well, I have now shared the bad news. However, there is a silver lining to this story.

One day recently, it actually dawned on me, that this type of behavior happens every day in business. Some of my customers were out in the marketplace irritating prospects by promoting essentially identical products in the same identical way. I knew then and I know now, that we can all do this better.

In 39 years of marketing and selling technology solutions, I have seen breakthrough products with dramatic, crystal clear ROI and a huge advantage over what was available in the market. I have seen products that honestly look the same, are sold the same way, with little apparent difference in what they offer.

In one case, after a little research, I showed a VP of marketing 4 phrases which came from both his/her company’s web site and 3 other competitors. The VP couldn’t tell which phrases were actually from their company site, and which were from competitors. They were floating in one big sea of sameness…

In fact, it’s very typical that a review of 20 or 30 competitive websites will yield the same results. Everyone has hired the smartest, most experienced people. Everyone is customer focused. Everyone wants to be your long term partner… blah, blah, blah. Everyone is saying that’s how they’re different!

I’m not saying the investments in websites didn’t create benefit. The sites are often very crisply worded and colorful. Ultimately, and unfortunately, they all have identical messages. As a result, no one stands out.

What this means is all their prospects are being pommelled by the same messages from 30 competitors every day. It makes them become numb to what is being said. Some actually become angry and agitated by this constant and meaningless distraction. How would you feel if 30 people called you saying the same thing? The truth is nobody ever makes any money by being the same. The only thing you get, is ignored.

The trouble is….many companies are in markets that have matured. When you’re in a mature market, you exist in a large sea of potential sameness. The work of pushing to clarify your value and to monetize for your buyers why you’re worth more than the other company requires a well-constructed process! It is an age old trouble for sure. The internet has made this harder because the problem becomes more apparent. Plus, competitors are enabled to make fancy high-level claims of value (market leading…customer-focused… predictable delivery…etc.).

Sometimes, it requires an outside perspective and a specialized approach to:

  1. Collect the intelligence of the management team
  2. Summarize the customer experiences to reveal the value, highlight the potential, and finally…RISE ABOVE THE SEA OF SAMENESS.

At Frantz Group, we’ve innovated just such a process called the Right Offer workshop.

We believe we are entering the most innovative period in the history of the tech industry. This means that we have precious little time to capture revenue for any product release or idea. Right Offers help you move fast, build pipeline at lower costs, and close more quickly.

John Frantz