Moving from Cliche to Competitive Advantage

In every strategic brand engagement, there comes a moment when we explore how an organization sees itself.

We unpack the brand’s position, vision, values, and legacy—and inevitably, we arrive at why customers choose them over competitors.

What emerges is usually illuminating, but it’s also riddled with assumptions. While these narratives contain kernels of truth, they’ve often calcified into comfortable explanations that go unchallenged year after year.

This isn’t surprising. Humans are storytelling creatures, and we naturally create narratives to make sense of our success.

So the problem I have isn’t with the act of storytelling itself—I am a writer after all—it’s that we often settle for clichés that feel profound to us but sound generic to everyone else.

I see this pattern repeat in nearly every workshop I lead.

When asked why customers choose them, executives (and marketers and sales people) inevitably reach for some variation of these familiar claims:

1. We make our customers feel seen and heard.
2. We do what we say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do it.
3. We provide next-level customer service.
4. Our people are our differentiator.
5. Our people are our greatest asset.
6. We’re in the people business and our customers know and feel that.
7. We strive for excellence in everything we do.
8. We do the right thing, even when it’s hard to do.
9. We put people above profits.
10. We’ve been around for X number of years.

All of these statements are important, and they indeed contribute to the reasons why your customers continue to do business with you.

However, these statements are also table stakes for every business you’re competing with. None of these declarations are true differentiators.

Not in this form at least.

Finding Your True Differentiator

To transform these generic statements into genuine differentiators, you need to push these ideas further by asking five specific questions:

1. What does this look like in practice?
2. How do we do this differently from everyone else?
3. What measurable impact does this create for our customers?
4. How does this connect to our customers’ bottom line?
5. Can we prove this with specific examples?

To see how this works in practice, let’s imagine you’re an architecture firm that, like many others, claims “We make our customers feel seen and heard.” Here’s how you might answer our five questions.

What does this look like in practice? Before designing anything, our senior architects spend two weeks observing how people actually use similar spaces. We conduct movement studies, interview stakeholders at all levels, and analyze traffic patterns throughout different times of day. For workplace designs, we even participate in our clients’ daily operations to understand their workflows firsthand.

How do we do this differently from everyone else? While most firms begin with preliminary sketches after a few client meetings, we’re the only architecture firm in our region that conducts extensive pre-design behavioral research. We maintain a dedicated team of architects with specialized certifications in workplace psychology and environmental behavior studies. Each project gets assigned both a design architect and a research architect.

What measurable impact does this create for our customers? Our research-first approach reduces design revisions by 65% compared to industry average. In workplace projects, our designs have led to a documented 40% increase in spontaneous collaboration among employees and a 45% improvement in space utilization rates. For our retail clients, customer dwell time increases an average of 22 minutes in our designed spaces.

How does this connect to our customers’ bottom line? The reduction in design revisions saves clients an average of $175,000 per project in change orders. For workplace clients, the improved space utilization translates to 30% lower real estate costs per employee. Our retail clients report an average 28% increase in sales per square foot after implementing our designs.

Can we prove this with specific examples? Yes. For TechSpace’s new headquarters, our behavioral research revealed that their engineers needed both focused work areas and impromptu collaboration spaces within a 20-second walk of their desks. This insight led to our “pod cluster” design concept. Post-occupancy studies show that employee satisfaction increased by 52%, spontaneous collaboration increased by 64%, and they were able to reduce their total square footage by 25% while accommodating 20% more employees.

The Transformation

Through this questioning process, that initial cliché—”We make our customers feel seen and heard”—transforms into something specific and provable: “Through our unique research-first approach, where certified behavioral architects study space utilization before design begins, we reduce change orders by 65% and improve space efficiency by up to 30%—as demonstrated in our TechSpace headquarters project, where our ‘pod cluster’ concept enabled 20% more employees to work in 25% less space while increasing collaboration by 64%.”

This detailed version contains all your proof points, but of course it’s far too lengthy for everyday use. You need a distilled version that maintains the power while being more memorable and practical. For instance:

“We design buildings around human behavior, not just aesthetics—delivering 30% more efficient spaces that people love to use.”

This shorter version captures the essence of your differentiation while being easy to communicate. It’s perfect for websites, sales conversations, and marketing materials. When prospects want to know more, you can back it up with the specific examples and metrics from the longer version.

Think of it this way: the detailed version is your evidence, while the distilled version is your claim. You need both—one to be memorable and the other to be credible.

This new statement is powerful because it:

• Describes a specific approach (embedded consultation with capped client loads)
• Includes concrete metrics (25% cost reduction, 2x adoption speed)
• References provable results (MaxTech case study)
• Highlights unique methodology (on-site senior consultants)
• Connects directly to business outcomes (cost savings and output increases)

Beyond the First Layer

This transformation process works with any of the cliché statements we started with. The key is that each question builds on the previous one, forcing you to move from general claims to specific, provable differentiators.

For example, if you start with “our people are our differentiator,” the questions would push you to specify:

• Exactly how your people operate differently
• What unique processes or approaches they use
• The measurable results they achieve
• The business impact of their approach
• Specific examples that prove your claims

Making It Real

The final test of your transformed differentiator is to ask:

• Would our competitors need to significantly change their business model to make this same claim?
• Can we support every element with specific data or examples?
• Would our customers immediately recognize this as true about us?
• Does it connect directly to measurable business outcomes?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you’ve found a genuine differentiator—one that will resonate with customers and truly set you apart in your market.

Remember, the goal isn’t to sound different; it’s to articulate the unique value you actually deliver in a way that can be proven.

When you get specific about how you create that value, supported by real metrics and examples, your true differentiators become clear, compelling, and credible.