To Help Your Business Succeed, Find Your Guacamole (Fast Company)

happily shared via Fast Company

BY JD RUCKER | AUGUST 30, 2012 | Fast Company

Having killer guacamole is a great competitive advantage for Mexican restaurants–here’s how drill down on your company’s biggest differentiator (or, “guacamole”).

If you ask people to name the restaurant that has their favorite salsa, some will have an opinion and others won’t. Same thing holds true for spaghetti sauce. Anyone can name a handful of places that they would recommend with good soup or great salads, but they rarely have a top spot in mind.

Now, ask someone who likes guacamole who has the best and they will normally have a place that comes to mind immediately. Try it.

What does guacamole have to do with business success?

When it comes to competitive advantages, having something that differentiates a business and helps it stand out is one of the keys. In many industries, there is very little difference between one company and another. Someone might like a specific brand of mustard but will settle for whatever is available. Honda, Mercedes, and Toyota were once the epitome of reliability but today a well-maintained Ford, Hyundai, or Fiat can easily be driven over 200,000 miles. Dell has as many fans as detractors, as does Samsung, Acer, Asus, and even Apple.

Today, it’s important to have the world’s best guacamole. It might not be the primary food served at a Mexican restaurant, but having a great guacamole is often enough to get people to come. More importantly, making the claim of having “the world’s best guacamole” is enough to get people to try it.

“Oh, really?” they ask. “We’ll just have to see about that.”

The key is finding yours.

Finding Your Guacamole

The biggest challenge many businesses face when determining their differentiator is that they focus too hard on the obvious. READ MORE…