Rule #1: Functionally satisfy at least the minimum; emotionally satisfy the maximum. If functional-needs satisfaction were the true differentiator of top brands and survival brands, Coke would not be an Alpha — Pepsi clearly proved that it was preferred in blind taste tests. To work toward becoming an Alpha, you must meet at least minimum functional needs and provide higher levels of satisfaction and significance than your competitors. You must make customers feel smart, appreciated, more attractive, more respected, and/or more fulfilled.
Rule #2: Don’t compete on price. Alpha companies don’t gain or maintain their Alpha status based on price alone. In fact, they compete less on price than their competitors do. Don’t get confused about the importance of price. Price is the final value judgment customers make — it is the conclusion they create based on weighing all of the benefits a product or brand seems to offer.
Rule #3: Drive expectations. You must differentiate your brand not by what it does, but by what it makes customers want. If your company can satisfy those things better than anyone else and at a higher level of emotional-needs satisfaction, it can then generate controlling influence with customers and competitors. The company that can drive expectations — among customers, distributors, and/or referral agents — to the highest level has the greatest immediate influence in the marketplace.
Rule #4: Measure causes over outcomes. Measuring and comparing sales, profits, market share, brand awareness, stock prices, margins, or any of the other outcomes that businesses spend so much time worrying over only clouds the focus on the causes that drive those desired outcomes. It is far more productive to understand your company’s performance in terms of causal factors, such as perceived satisfaction of needs (especially self-satisfaction and personal significance), than in terms of final outcomes. The list is long, but other key causal factors driving revenue generation include communications effectiveness, brand differentiation, and loyalty generation.
Rule #5: Critical change occurs once competitors start to follow your lead. This process of leading the pack starts with driving new and higher customer expectations. Once competitors discover that your customers are influencing customers of other products to buy your product because you have set new, higher expectations, those competitors start to follow your lead. When this happens, you have established a level of influence momentum that can be sustained for as long as you protect the ''Alpha assets'' that got you there, such as product performance, availability, company personality, customer support, and so on.
About the Author
Wes Ball is founder of The Ball Group, a strategic innovation management consulting firm, and author of The Alpha Factor: The Secret to Dominating Competitors and Creating Self-Sustaining Success (Westlyn Publishing, www.thealphafactor.com).
