Creating Competitive Advantage: Give Customers a Reason to Choose You Over Your Competitors

I read both Creating Competitive Advantage and Relevant Selling and found them both extremely helpful. As a business owner, this book gave me real tips on how to differentiate my business from others. It is an easy read and one that every business owner and member of a sales team must read.Avoid commoditizing yourself. This book is full of great tips that are a game changer for all size businesses. Many people recommended this book to me. I am so glad I finally read it! The author understands what businesses need to communicate their strengths to prospective clients and gain a competitive advantage.

I am a business consultant and have read many business books. I am always searching to mine some nugget of truth that not only impacts my approach to my clients but will enhance my business model. Creating Competitive Advantage exceeds that criteria. Author Jaynie L. Smith hits the bulls eye by revealing that most companies can’t successfully identify their competitive advantages (CA’s) and in turn can’t properly promote and grow their business. Jaynie asks the right questions to help the business leaders drill down to who they really are and how they are different or better than their competitors. Once the CA’s are identified then a marketing plan can be created around this proper foundation. This leads to positive business growth and sense of empowerment with a feeling of confidence that the business is going in the right direction.Once a business creates a list of CA’s it is important that they are verified by their customer base. Because the only perceptions that matter are those of the customer. This book is great mix of theoretical and practical examples from the hundreds of business clients she has served. It is a “must read” book for any business leaders library.

An insightful book that helps crystallize some intuitive concepts and also outlines how to put them into practise in ways that will help achieve positive results. The ideas and applications stand up equally for those in a professional ("institutional") sales position or in a more entrepreneurial role. Likewise, I found this valuable even after 25+ years in sales and sales management positions but I can see how those with less experience can benefit. I'd put this as a "must" for any sales or sales management library.

What really matters to your customers? Find out from them and create and use your competitive advantages. You will not have to deal with price again. Jaynie will show you how. Must read if you have customers you want to keep.

As a strategist, lecturer and consultant in Africa this book offers me a great 'back to basics' read:--it is not too academic and neither is it motivational talk--it brings real business acumen to the table by focusing on your customers and how youcan please them for sustainable sales and profits...--by unearthing and exploiting a potent competitive advantage against competitors--it quickly goes to the heart of the matter of standing out among the crowd in a way that isrelevant to customers but lethal to competitors--it also has great case studies that bring Jaynies's concepts to life in an engaging wayAfter reading this book you will know how to think about your advantages and thus how to market them properly.I have read strategy tomes but i found this book on-point and accessible to all kinds of readers.Worth every cent indeed and occupying a proud space in my library!

I went into this book having tried to develop C.A. previously without much success for a commodity business. This book made it clear what to consider and what not to consider by the many examples of actual companies given. Whether you believer C.A. is dead or alive (see Forbes article), this is a great experience for a company to go through to help develop better focused strengths and positioning statements.

An excellent book with many great examples of what Competitive Advantage is and it is not...a good help for my class.

"Value-add", "Value-proposition", "competitive edge", etc. are pretty tame marketing clichés these days. This book might have been ground-breaking in 2006, but doesn't deliver much bang-for-the-buck (another cliché) today.

Every now and again I read a book that plenty of other people rave about but I don't get. This is such a book. Sometimes the writing style just doesn't click with me. Sometimes it's the message in a book that's the problem and that's what happens here.First I'll quibble with the title. The book is more about communicating competitive advantage than creating it.The big plus I got from the book - and it's something I've been guilty of ignoring sometimes, even though I know better, is to quantify. "We provide excellent service" is fairly meaningless because it's so generic. It's a bland cliché that washes over a customer. "We deliver 98.3% of orders by the due delivery date" is much more impressive.That's the type of statement that the book calls a competitive advantage but is it true?It is if competitors offer much less consistency, it's not if delivery date promises are padded out so much that the delivery lead time is twice that of competitors. Combining "We deliver 98.3% of orders by the due delivery date" with "Our delivery lead times are 52% faster than the industry average" is more impressive and on its way to being the source of a competitive advantage.Even then, you're in danger of leaving a statement floating as the equivalent of a feature - you need to drive home the benefit so the customers really understand the consequences. In the delivery example it might be "customers switching to us are able to achieve an average of 27% reduction in inventory, putting $109,000 back in their bank accounts and improving their own delivery based competitive advantage."The true competitive advantage in a B2B market is how much money you can save or earn for your customers. If it doesn't lead to more money in their bank account then what you claim to be a competitive advantage is a mirage.The author uses plenty of examples from her own clients in Creating Competitive Advantage but it means that the book comes across as a promotion for her consultancy services. Perhaps a bit more theory and then case studies in the entrepreneurs' or CEOs' words would have made it easier to connect with. I think it's much nicer if clients do your bragging for you.Differentiating your business is such an important issue that it may be worth taking a look at this book and making your own mind up. It doesn't cost much but there is also the time it takes to read to consider.The book has merits but I'm only giving it three stars.Paul Simister, a business coach who helps business owners who are stuck, get unstuck.

During a Sales conference, this book was highly recommended as a perfect read to move you further up the ladder in your profession. Looking forward to the top of the tree

Lo leí en mi semana de vacaciones y definitivamente si te dedicas a las ventas o al emprendimiento tienes que leerlo es una herramienta básica conocer y desarrollar tus ventajas competitivas

Even though some of the examples are a little dated now, the book was excellent and very relavent.