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This excerpt from The Electrical Marketer's Survival Guide will show you how to draw some clearer distinctions between your company and its competitors.
Sure it's ugly out there. But when business goes sour, it can actually be a good time to catch some competitors sleeping, or others who have cut back on some of their core strengths. By moving fast, you can hone the differences between your firm and its competitors and grab some market share - even before business comes back. One of the best ways to do this is to offer more value-added services than your competitors. A value-added service is an investment that you have made in your company that makes life easier for your customers or helps you do a better job of performing as a distributor of electrical supplies.
Value-added services help differentiate your company from its competitors, and it's important to regularly take stock of the services your company offers - as well as those of your competitors. Take a close look at the services a competitor is unwilling or unable to perform and you may find that your company can package some of them for your own mix of customers. The company with the best package of value-added services will win its unfair share of the market most of the time.
This article will teach you how to analyze the value-added services that you and your competitors focus on. It also offers a four-step strategy that you can use to establish your company as the primary source of electrical supplies in your market. It's a strategy excerpted from the revised edition of "The Electrical Marketers Survival Guide," a book and training program that...