Roadside fruit sellers on carts have an inherent sense of exposing perceptible selling differentiation (PSD). They consciously entice passersby with fruits shining fresh, temptingly ripe and ready-to-consume. These entrepreneurs are their own controller of supply chain, sales, finance, administration and public relations, negotiating space with police and city authorities. Cart sellers can teach corporates a lesson or two on differentiating from competition through punter pulling selling skills that are ?implicitly visible.

USP: Earlier, the marketing world used unique selling proposition (USP) for differentiation. According to Wikipedia, ?USP is a marketing concept ? to explain a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and that this convinced them to switch brands. The term was invented by Rosser Reeves.? Today, we see USP being used to demonstrate differentiation even in R&D and brand proposition.

In the 21st century?s digital era, USP concept has become obsolete. When USP was invented, most big innovations emerged every 20 years; global corporations did their own manufacturing, industries dominated over buyers. Today, buyers dictate their requirements to industry; innovations are happening fast and plenty, almost every 20 days. In the rush to introduce products, differentiation is taking a beating. Marketers are hard-pressed to find USP, which, as per Reeves? theory, makes buyers switch to the brand best differentiated. USP does not answer how a brand will sustain in the market. Can you expect buyers to switch to your brand only because of good advertising and vice-versa? Is your brand content otherwise hollow? Mere advertising display of USP cannot win buyers.

Purchase factors: What is it that makes people buy? Three crucial factors create PSD: word-of-mouth, first visual appearance and actual experience.

Word-of-mouth goes beyond hearing and getting influenced by others to the social networking space. Backed by the authenticity of previous excellence, corporations launch new products. The two-day advance queue for iPhone?s launch in Japan is a great example. You know what you want, but at the point of purchase another, more expensive product can change your mind if you implicitly gauge its higher value. That?s PSD at the first visual appearance which can also encourage purchase not immediately necessary, but seems the right fit. If actual experience does not encourage repeat purchase, you need to rectify deficiency that?s possibly crept into your offer. I?ve always experienced that it makes a great difference to involve consumers at every stage of product development. Also, continuous measure of performance with competition keeps PSD alive.

Repeat purchase, the must of marketing: Spectacular product launches are made, but after three-four months, repurchase generally dwindles. Why? With buyers increasingly demanding new and extraordinary experience, innovation is on the fast track. Several products of similar performance proliferate in the market. The solution is to engage the buyer with the product?s intrinsic properties so that they are ready to repurchase. These can be gauged in consumer research where the stimulus is presented in an unbiased manner to elicit an authentic response.

PSD to the rescue: The potential solution for marketers challenged with too many undifferentiated products, is perceptible selling differentiation to keep pace with buyers sway. What exactly does PSD stand for? It is an ?outside-in-out? approach that leads to purchase and repurchase. When you involve buyers from the inception of product development, you create differentiation that buyers perceive, value and want. The buyer?s requirement is your outside-in perspective, what the company then delivers to the market leads buyers to buy and buy again. Demanding buyers pay little heed to jargons, showy advertising or flashy people in B2B business. They seek quality first, but not the ISO 9000/14000 variety. They may like a product?s look, but to evoke repurchase they need to perceive sustainable differentiated value before buying, and experience satisfaction afterwards.

PSD is key to sustain growth: In the competitive scenario, ?perceptible? is the intrinsic tangible quality, ?selling? is the product?s functionality relevant to the buyer, and ?differentiation? is the balance of quality and functionality that makes the product look good in the competitive context.

A distinguished chef meets his customer?s stated need by doing multiple trials involving people who taste his food and give their judgment. In continuously fine-tuning, it?s all about how he adjusts ingredient dosage to balance his dish. Similarly, your every offering has to arrive at a certain balance. To start a new market for the consumer?s unstated need, you have to simulate an experience. Create such a discomfort of newness that the buyer?s mind totally shifts to the product development as shock-of-the-new. Not everyone will immediately connect. Society has drivers and followers. Have the driver co-opt the unstated to become an obvious need.

In the product development research lab where you involve buyers, don?t force-fit a proposition by applying reason and bulldozing people. Until the buyer implicitly accepts the proposition, it?s a risk to go to market. Well polished visual differentiation is the external shell. Buyers should subliminally accept a perceptible substance embedded in a proposition. Only when the five human senses appreciate the proposition as implicit can repurchase happen.

When organisations lack PSD: The symptoms of PSD deficient enterprises are 1) Top line is growing but bottom line is stagnant; 2) Top and bottom lines are both under stress; and 3) Bottom line is good but top line is stagnant. To overcome such situations your operations need to drive change through PSD. In some critical pocket, you have to make a pit-stop for tightening up your enterprise?s internal system. It does not mean total operations standstill. Only your ego-centric racing against competitors to gain market stature has to take a break. The analogy here is that you cannot repair a car while driving it.

To make yours a transnational brand, think and act with PSD as the central gravitation of your enterprise. Big brands become a rage not for their dazzling image but for PSD. For creating a new product or service or improving an existing one, you need to involve a certain number of buyers as a sounding board from the initial stage. When your buyers say, “I believe in it, it works well for me, it looks good,? it means they have repurchase motivation.

You may prioritise your enterprise, vendor, supply chain, analyst, and channel, but in developing a product give first priority to the buyer. Otherwise, today?s evolved set of buyers will not see perceptible differentiation in your offering. Without an assured buyer, where is your business future? For mass scale product marketing and selling, PSD is the only solution that will give you a strong top line, bottom line and market share growth that will sustain.

?Shombit Sengupta is an international creative business strategy consultant to top managements. Reach him at http://www.shiningconsulting.com