I am stepping over the line this week and saying something that most of you don’t want to hear. When it comes to attracting and keeping customers, quality is not enough.

Here’s the reality. When I ask prospective clients what makes them different from their competitors, they almost always say, “our quality.” Then they’ll admit that most of their competitors are competent and many are quite good. But they’ll continue to contend that they are the premium provider. Here’s the sticky part.

œ Your prospects assume you are competent, or they wouldn’t even be considering you. It is a given, not something they are shopping for. It’s a “duh.”

œ The more sophisticated your product or service, the less capable your prospects are to judge the quality. In other words, they cannot tell the difference between good and superb.

We are all proud of the work we do and the quality we deliver. So it’s a bitter pill to swallow to recognize that it is not a differentiator. Will it eliminate a few substandard competitors? Sure, but by and large, we’re going to battle against companies that are just as good as we are. That’s why branding matters so much in today’s business world.

If you were the only one who was good at what you do, new business would be a piece of cake. But since youfre not, you need to give them a reason to at least consider you. That’s the power of your brand.

And as much as you’d like it to be, unless your product or service is measurably superior in a notable and remarkable way, your brand is not quality. Time to dig deeper!

Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group and the author of “99.3 Random Acts of Marketing.” He can be reached at Drew@MclellanMarketing.com.