The last 3 workdays I have walked through 3 Tiers of Differentiation, from lowest level of success to the highest. The lowest level is Price(Cheapest) and the highest level is Raving Fans. I hope the 9 individual levels broken into 3 tiers will be helpful in your journey.

In addition, I promised a follow up personal story that will help those individuals seeking for ways to differentiate themselves. Here is a hint...I had been branded as "persistent"

In 1997, long before I started my Executive Coaching business, I moved to Dallas to expand my real estate brokerage company founded in Tyler, Texas. At the time our company managed, leased and sold office and retail real estate. I was referred to talk to an elderly gentleman that quietly had amassed over 100 properties.

The individual flew under the radar and shunned publicity. I called him, wrote him, stopped by his office and never did I get a response. Six months into this experience, while at a happy hour, I discovered that I was talking to the man's son-in-law. The son-in-law worked in the same office as his father-in-law and I was able to get a meeting with him. I got nowhere with the son-in-law but I dropped off another card with the receptionist. I calendared and carried out touch-points with the gentleman for the next two years. Here is where the story gets sweet.

One day in my office in Dallas, I received a call from a Senior Trust Manager at a very large worldwide trust management company out of Chicago. The trust officer told me that they were managing a 35 property real estate portfolio that was being mismanaged. He had heard of our company and wanted to talk to us. We ended up managing and leasing those assets for 5 years, a very good revenue stream for us, and I was able to list and sell 3 of them for great commissions.

You might be thinking these assets belonged to the gentleman around how all of this started. They were not his assets. That man actually sat on the Board of Directors of the trust company and was the major stockholder. When asked by the Senior Trust Manager at a board meeting in Chicago about service providers in Dallas, the gentleman said, " give Mark Noble in Dallas a call".

The moral of this story is, with or without a formal plan for differentiation for your brand, don't ever work your plan without "PERSISTENCE"!