Ask most businesspeople how Alpha companies — businesses that dominate their industry or product category — earn top-dog position, and they’ll probably list things like competitive pricing, customer service, quality products, being the first to market, and so on. Surprisingly, those aren’t the factors that create Alpha companies, according to Wes Ball, author of The Alpha Factor (thealphafactor.com). Below are tested ways to increase revenues, knock out competitors, and create a winning brand:

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• Functionally satisfy at least the minimum; emotionally satisfy the maximum. Alphas meet their customers’ functional needs (quality, performance) but place the main focus on making customers feel smarter, more appreciated, more attractive, more respected, and/or more fulfilled.

• Don’t compete on price. Price is the final value judgment customers make, the conclusion they create after weighing all the benefits a product or brand seems to offer.

• Drive expectations. Alphas differentiate their brand not by what it does, but by what it makes customers want. If your company can satisfy those things better than anyone else and at a higher level of emotional satisfaction, it can generate controlling influence with customers as well as retailers and distributors.

• Measure causes over outcomes. Measuring and comparing sales, profits, market share, or any of the other outcomes that businesses spend so much time worrying about only clouds the focus on the causes that drive those desired outcomes. Instead, understand your company’s performance in terms of causal factors, such as strategic communications effectiveness, brand differentiation, and loyalty generation.

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