The marketplace is crowded with competitors using the same ideal customer profile (ICP) playbook. Personalization is the key to being heard through the noise. Being transaction-oriented will not muster the attention that making your customers feel seen, heard, and understood will. Even saturated markets always have space for unmet needs to be fulfilled and pain points to be ameliorated.

Focus on the value you deliver. Don’t get into competing on price. Put your prospect first and win on the value of solving their problems and dissolving the constraints that create the problems in the first place.

Create one valuable idea for a specific market and leverage it. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Integrate  future-oriented thinking into your product or service. Knowing how your customers’ needs will change in the next ten years, you can help them avoid future problems.

Affirm your brand voice. Speak to your customers in a voice they can relate to. Be the conversation starter and not the commodity pusher. Leverage technology by incorporating augmented reality, virtual reality, and 3D applications into your marketing. Distill your services and marketing language so you have a valuable, relevant, and compelling offer. Solidify your unique value position (UVP) to drive an achievable growth roadmap for your customers.

Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, has written an inspiring book, Behind the Cloud, about building an idea into a billion dollar company and changing the industry along the way. Here are a few nuggets:
·      Focus on the 20 percent that makes 80 percent of the difference.
·      Don’t be intimidated by an idea’s potential, even if you have to go at it by yourself. Benioff saw that the Siebel platform could manage contacts and track leads for salespeople, but it was high-maintenance and expensive. He improved it by using cloud computing and a “Software-as-a-Service” model. The rest is history.
·      Assert yourself from day one using aggressive marketing. Find the features that make your business unique and share them with the public in an engaging and attractive way.
·      Put the customer at the heart of your business. Build trust and loyalty with them.
·      Focus on one product or service at a time. Salesforce focused on one product that would suit everyone and by doing so managed to gain leverage and revolutionize an industry.