Creating Competitive Advantage Starts With Proof, Not Claims

Put a CEO on the spot and ask what makes the company different, and the answer usually comes fast. Service, people, relationships. What comes slowly, if it comes at all, is the evidence. Do customers actually say that? Does anyone check?

Jaynie Smith has spent decades asking those questions. She is the CEO of Smart Advantage, a consultancy in Fort Lauderdale. Her research covers 25 years, 250 companies and 30,000+ customer interviews. What she found, again and again, is that companies talk confidently about their differentiation without much proof that buyers agree. For anyone serious about creating competitive advantage, that is the first problem to fix.

 

 

Why Smart Advantage CEO Jaynie Smith Says 95 Percent of Leadership Teams Misread Their Own Customers

Ask a company what makes it different from its competitors, and the answer comes fast. Ask them for proof, and they usually cannot.

Jaynie Smith has spent more than two decades closing that gap. Smith is the founder and CEO of Smart Advantage, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based consultancy founded in 2005 that works with companies to identify and prove their competitive advantage from the customer’s perspective rather than the company’s own. Across more than 250 client engagements, from single-location businesses to divisions of major global companies, the firm has documented the same blind spot again and again. By its account, 95 percent of leadership teams guess wrong about what their customers value most.

 

 

Jaynie Smith Has Spent Three Decades Proving CEOs Wrong About Their Own Customers

Most companies are certain they know what their customers value most. Most of them are wrong, and Jaynie Smith has spent 25 years proving it.

Jaynie Smith is the founder and CEO of Smart Advantage, a Jupiter, Florida, consultancy, a keynote speaker, and the author of Creating Competitive Advantage (Doubleday Currency, 2006), co-authored with former Forbes senior editor William G. Flanagan, and Relevant Selling (Executive Suite Press, 2012). Her firm’s double-blind research of its clients’ customers and prospects keeps landing on the same result: roughly 95 percent of leadership teams misjudge what their customers care about most. She still describes the size of that gap as “absolutely stunning.”

 

 

Your AI Tool Is Already Obsolete If You’re Making This Massive Data Mistake

One of AI’s most promising capabilities is turning raw data into actionable insight.  Just like any other business-AI integration, many leaders are rushing in without first asking a basic question.  Is the data actually ready for it?

Using too many tokens and spending a ridiculous amount of money isn’t the only danger AI poses.  Yes, AI can revolutionize how you use your company’s data, but that’s only possible if you can feed it good data.