I was just on an Alignable call with a bunch of business owners, and only one or  two of them had their business positioned correctly, IMHO.

To start with, you have to know who your target customer is, or who think it is.

What does that customer want in a product or service that you are providing or hope to provide?

Who else is providing it? What do you think of what they’re doing? What do your potential customers think?

You can go on Linked In or Survey Monkey to find out, although you run the risk of potential competitors finding out what you’re doing.

Normally, you have several areas of differentiation: product, presale service, postsale service, product quality, service quality and so forth. And, of course, price. PRICE IS NOT THE ONLY DIFFERENTIATOR.

Which of these is important to your customers? Do you know?

If you don’t know better find out, ricky tick.

You should be differentiated on at least three of them to start.

Ideally, you should be differentiated on all, but as you go along, you’ll get smarter about customer wants and needs.