So your buyer or seller grab the phone book, or search the World Wide Web for information about listing or buying a home and are inundated with an overwhelming field of choices. Some companies feature big ads splashed about the pages, looming over the smaller ads featured in the area of services they are seeking. Google and Yahoo offer thousands of options to consider.

What makes a customer select one service over another? The size of the ad? The special wording? Name brand or recognition? Studies show that for today's consumer, standing out in a remarkable way is the ticket.

In this age of information and constant hype, we are pummeled daily with millions of information bits, hundreds of ads, noisy commercials and a ton of junk e-mails. It takes a real jolt to get our attention, and in many cases, not a big jolt, as our competition is often sleeping at the switch. It may be a matter of simply standing out in a different way.

In one of his latest books "Purple Cow", Seth Godin drives home the importance of being "remarkable." Seth states that from a customer's point of view, "You are either remarkable or invisible". At a recent presentation Godin commented that "being very good…isn't", and today's consumer compels us to provide a more robust reason to be selected as the solution to their needs.

Traditionally in our marketing efforts, we've depended on key words like "experienced" or "exceptional service" to win their business. However, recent studies indicate that the consumer is immune and oversold by this unoriginal vocabulary. Customers are seeking to be swayed or influenced by some striking differentiation in the marketplace, a uniqueness that sets you apart from all the other "lawn signs" or real estate options vying for their business.

So the question to ask yourself is: What can you do today to become more "remarkable" in your service offerings?

1. You've heard it before – Develop and market a specific expertise. Feature this striking difference in ALL areas of your marketing endeavors. A "brand" goes beyond a catchy phrase, or tag line. A true brand is the promise of an experience; an expectation of what you can anticipate. That process happens in the mind of the consumer when they hear your name or check out your website or ads. What message are they getting now? How can you deepen and enrich your market perception with an extraordinary differentiation in how you deliver your special brand of service or expertise?

2. What "brand effect" are you communicating when you offer your services in any of your communications? How accurate is your picture of your level of service and expertise compared to what is the actual reality to a customer or client? Perception by the client is the true test, and sadly is often much different than you think.

3. How excited are you or your staff about your service offering? How fired up are you about what you do, how you do it and who you do it for? One immediate way to shift into outstanding is quite simply by how you and your staff answer the phone... Think new, think remarkable! Take the opportunity to "re-frame" the caller and begin the answering process in a new and exciting way. – "Great things are happening at Terri Murphy's office" or "It's another great day at Susie Smith's office" – Kick the calls up with new energy, new excitement about the privilege of doing business with this new prospect, present customer or future client. Enthusiasm is infectious. People love doing business with people who care, and are drawn to the energy of enthusiasm. Don't underestimate that critical first point of contact! If you don't think so, make a few calls and note the monotone, uninteresting, mechanical way phone calls are handled by agents or staff. Create the magic on the first point of contact by making the ordinary extraordinary.

4. Look around. What special certifications do you have that support your services that the others don't? If a prospective buyer checks out the yellow pages or your website, what jumps out and makes you the best choice for their needs? The consumer must "feel" like you have the edge, especially where it concerns their specific needs to grab their attention. Whether it is additional certification, education, out of the box services, specialization, or exceptional guarantees, you might just get a new customer instead of losing them to hundreds of other choices available. Value will pre-empt price, as customers are prone to pay for special services when they seek a unique service.

5. Differentiate your service model: Immediate response to customer inquiries will increase your bottom line and beat out over 50 percent of your competition if you check out recent consumer patterns. These studies provided by Information Now, a California call center, reveal that over 42 percent of prospects will attempt to get information before or after normal business hours. How immediately do you provide information when they want it and how they want it? How would you grade your response time and methods? To grab the impatient consumer of today, it is time to gear up and get "instant". This may just be the differentiation your consumer is seeking. Consider the fact that technology has helped us provide quicker service, but the integration of the many tech tools and solutions are for the most part not well integrated with each other. Shore up on how you can create your own center for customer care where you are "wired" into your "center" to provide immediate response.

6. This doesn't mean you need a pager pinned to your pajamas, but rather that you learn how to find and use web solutions and automated voice response systems that support customer care 24x7. Your goal is to initially capture and then nurture that prospect until they are ready to advance the relationship to the next level. Today's automated technology offer strategically delivered messages and reports through drip systems to serve the prospect and brand you as their service resource.

Don't miss the opportunity to provide immediate service and earn the right to retain the prospect for conversion to a sold customer a few weeks or months down the road. People are sold by interaction and effective communication.

Take a good look at how you are positioned in your market, how you communicate that position and what you can do to kick up your services to remarkable and compel a larger spotlight in your marketplace.

Published: February 1, 2005

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.