Is your company the leading provider?

Is that phrase, or something similar, anywhere on your company website, brochures, advertising or press releases?

Get rid of it.

It isn’t credible.

All of your competitors can (and probably do) make the same claim with the same authority. The self-proclaimed kind. As in, “I can certainly rationalize, based on one criterion or another, why we are indeed the leading provider.”

Great. Except, nobody cares.

Of all the times you’ve created a list of criteria for evaluating competitive offerings, has “Is the leading provider” ever been one of those criteria?

Most of us could care less who the self-proclaimed leading provider is when looking for someone to solve our problem.

Besides, with every company self-proclaiming as the leading provider, that ceases to be a point of differentiation.

The phrase “leading provider” is really only meaningful to…you guessed it, your company.

It might make members of your team feel good.

Out here in customer land though, it’s meaningless.

But, this is only a symptom of a much larger malady that afflicts many companies.

It’s the addiction to talking about oneself.

To read most companies’ websites, collateral, advertising, and press releases, you’d think they’ve convinced themselves that they’re at the center of the universe.

And they desperately want you also to believe that the universe revolves around them.

When in fact, the customer is the center of the universe.

The customer is the only reason a company can exist at all.

And what the customer cares about is very simple:

• Can you solve their problem or fulfill their desire?
• At what cost?
• Is it worth the cost?
• How do they get your solution?
• Will you take the risk out of trying it?

Companies (and that’s most companies, sadly) that spend paragraphs upon paragraphs talking about how they’re #1 at everything, have the most advanced processes, best team in the universe, bla bla bla…are wasting all kinds of space and words on stuff customers simply don’t care about.

Which means those companies are losing customers.

I’m willing to bet you could take a sculpting knife to your marketing communications right now and chip away all kinds of excess verbiage that serves absolutely no purpose (except your company’s vanity).

You might end up with 80% less copy than you have now!

That’s a good thing.

Get rid of it.

Focus solely on the customer. Give them what they’re looking for.

• Can you solve their problem or fulfill their desire?
• At what cost?
• Is it worth the cost?
• How do they get your solution?
• Will you take the risk out of trying it?

All of your messaging should focus on those things.

Everything else will bore your customers and cause them to look elsewhere.

Ron Marcus is the principal of Grow, a brand and marketing consultancy for small businesses and nonprofits. He’s been helping businesses and nonprofits create and live authentic, successful brands in service of people for thirty years.