If shoppers were motivated solely by price, our world would be a drastically different place, but the fact that we’re regularly inundated by a wide variety of products just goes to show that different people value different things when it comes to purchasing goods, similar or otherwise. As an employee trying to grow the business I work for, a good deal of my time is dedicated towards finding new and exciting ways to engage prospective clients. If you’re still reading this, your workday might not be so different than my own. The tough part is that because we’re constantly fighting time constraints with limited resources, we’re in this perpetual rush to prioritize which touch points to use, and which to put on the backburner or discard altogether. This much is further complicated by the fact that individual consumers interact with brands differently.

So what should you do? Well, I don’t know, but I can tell you what I would. When in doubt, I tend to break a problem down to its simplest terms, and I’m a big believer that the simplest explanations are typically the best ones [see: Occam’s Razor]. Here, the question should probably be framed as, “How do we provide value beyond a transaction?” It’s something I think I can answer, at least partially, with three anecdotes from my growing up.

My mom has owned restaurants in Downtown Dallas since I was about six or seven-years-old, good ones too. I’m not just saying that because she is who she is. They’ve just always had really good food at a phenomenal price. When I was last helped out there, a cheeseburger combination with fries and a drink cost $4.28 with tax. In LA, I’m lucky if I can pay around $8.00 for something comparable. Outside of those two selling points, quality and price point, she knows basically everyone’s name who walks through the door despite the fact that the restaurant gets really, really busy. Growing up, my parents would pretty regularly forget how old my siblings and I were when taking us to the doctor’s office as kids, but my mom wouldn’t forget her customers’ names or what they regularly ordered. By the time you walked up to the counter, she’d be pouring your soda of choice or handing you a glass of ice for tea. Get to know your customers. Be personable and ask them how they’re doing. You or I could probably find 100 different burgers at 100 different places on Yelp. What you probably won’t find is an eccentric little Asian woman who will ask what your kids are doing for the summer or where your other lunch buddy is. It’s both hilarious and unequivocally welcoming.

When I was 11-13, I would go to an old school barbershop a few blocks away from the restaurant. When I say old school, I don’t mean that it had a barber’s pole complete with old men. I mean that they used straight edged razors, heated shaving cream and the Oster Stim-U-Lax for back rubs after haircuts. They had a guy who shined shoes in the corner though I don’t remember ever seeing him actually working. Having established that, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say that these guys were probably born sometime during FDR’s presidency, and I’m thinking more along the lines of his first term and not the second or third. What was great about their shop was that it didn’t have bells and whistles. It didn’t need to. Being a barbershop for grown men, it didn’t need to blast house music or serve green apple martinis. Stick to your guns and focus on producing a high-quality product because all the bells and whistles in the world won’t obscure a bad one, not in the long-term at least.

Lastly, I’d encourage you to be mindful of all the small things. Back in Dallas, there’s a steakhouse called, Nick & Sam’s that I absolutely love. The first time I went, I was charged with booking a reservation for my family, so we could celebrate my brother’s finding a new job. If you’re a meat eater in Dallas and haven’t been, or you find yourself close by for some reason or another, you have to go in and try their porterhouse. The customer service was good and so was the food. What stood out was the fact that the general manager called me the next afternoon to ask how my family and I enjoyed dining there. Before you extrapolate that the GM was a telepath, he had my phone number from the reservation where I had indicated that it was our first time dining there together. Even still, you have to admit that his calling was both thoughtful and very cool. He could’ve sent a form e-mail, which would probably save him boatloads of time, but he didn’t. He took the time to make the call. Each and every business will inevitably develop kinks. That’s just a simple fact. Gathering feedback is an easy way to figure out if you’re operating up to par or that you need to make changes somewhere along the way.

Be passionate about your business and your work. That means caring about your customers because passion translates into commitment, and commitment drives success. Your business and its branding is born out of differentiation and dies from its lack thereof. Setting yourself apart is doing more than saying that you’re different or that you’re better. It requires action.

At the end of the day, how are you doing that?

Photo Credit: GraphicsDB.com