Create Distinction - Book Review

Create Distinction: What to do When "Great" Isn't Good Enough to Grow you Business by Scott McKain

I'm not sure where I heard about this book but had put it on my Amazon wish list  (I use this all the time to keep track of books I might eventually want to read) and have finally gotten around to reading it.  The book is well written and interesting.  The focus, as you can gather from the title, is about creating distinction for your business, whatever business, with the intent that the business would thrive.  I picked several useful ideas from the book which I plan on incorporating in various projects I'm working on.

"...having a passion for what you do does not mean you will have a successful business."  (p22)  I really liked having this quote early in the book because we hear so much about the importance of passion (yes, it IS important) but we often overlook the other parts and pieces needed to make a business SUCCESSFUL.  This is followed up with "...we tend to pursue new customers with more enthusiasm than we prize existing ones." (p27) and "...few companies or professionals have a retention strategy, a precise program that outlines specific steps for retaining our current customers, for growing and expanding the business we are obtaining from them." (p27)  Wow, this really got me hooked because I see this almost every day.  It seems that a LOT more effort, time and money go into securing new customers while current customers seem to disappear and we don't know why.  According to McKain, creating distinction is, at least, part of the answer.

At the end of each chapter he provides an Executive Summary which is very helpful for reviewing the material or possibly even pre-viewing the material.  In this first two chapters he talks about the Three Destroyers of Differentiation:

1. Copycat Competition and Incremental Advancement.  
2. Change that Creates Tougher Competition
3. Familiarity Breeds Complacency

This was interesting and certainly seems to make sense. Next he expands upon the Three Levels of Differentiation and their application in creating distinction for any business.  McKain states that businesses can differentiate themselves in only three ways:  You can create distinction by product differentiation in which you have a product which no one else has, or you can differentiate by price, either by being the highest or the lowest, but this is a sharp sword which can destroy as easily as it can bring success.  Finally you can differentiate on the basis of service.  "If you cannot impact the design of your products, and if you cannot choose or control the price, then your primary point of differentiation must become service." (p65)  However, before you say, "That's us, we provide great service," read this:  "what will not differentiate you in today's world: product quality (because there is little real difference in the quality of most products), customer service (because everyone has learned how to provide competent customer service - well, almost everyone) . . .."(p.65)

The point is that unless there is something truly distinctive about your service, customers will find that distinction somewhere else.  McKain calls this the "Ebert Effect" after the film critic Roger Ebert.  Here is his definition of the Ebert Effect:  when customers - from their perspective - are inundated with indistinguishable choices, they tend to perceive a product, service, approach, or experience with a specific point of differentiation to be superior." (p.77)  And that differentiation must be at a point that matters to the customer. 

Most of the rest of the book is devoted to expanding on "The Four Cornerstones of Distinction."

1. Clarity
2. Creativity
3. Communication
4. Customer-Experience Focus

I think this is a good book for the leadership team to read together and discuss, perhaps even to work on together at an offsite location for a few days.  The bottom line to all this is that all the talk about distinction ultimately has to move from planning to action.  Execution and resolve to commit, as I've stated in other posts, seem to be the sticking point upon which this hangs.