7/31/2010 11:28:52 PM


What Are You Really Selling?
People in the fast-food business used to think they were selling food.

Then McDonald's came along and figured out that people weren't buying hamburgers. People were buying an experience.

Burger King's brass were sure that McDonald's was wrong. Knowing they made the flame-broiled hamburgers that more people preferred, Burger King executives decided to take that unique point of difference and pummel McDonald's with it: "We're flame broiled, not fried."

This pummeling accomplished nothing, because McDonald's was right: Fast-food hamburger restaurants are not in the hamburger business.

Maybe you think prospects in your industry are looking for hamburgers. Chances are that they want something else. The first company to figure out what that is wins.

Find out what clients are really buying.