The Category of One

Lesson 4: The Onlyness Strategy

I was looking at a pitch deck for a new project-management tool recently. Every slide focused on how they were better than Jira or Monday. They had more features, a cleaner interface, and a lower price. They were playing a game they could never win. If your primary argument is that you are better, you are admitting you are the same as everyone else, just slightly improved.

The Lesson?

Better is a race to the bottom. Only is a category of one. To command a premium, you must move the conversation away from feature comparisons and toward unique capability. If you are the only one who does what you do for a specific group of people, price becomes secondary to access. You are no longer a commodity; you are a destination.

The Framework: The Category of One

This framework forces you to complete the statement: We are the only [category] that [unique capability]. This capability must be meaningful to the customer, defensible against competitors, and capable of being delivered consistently.

For example, Happy Beginnings positioned themselves as the only wedding invitation company that guarantees guests will ask where you got them. They backed this up with a claim that 94 percent of couples reported five or more compliments, or they would redesign for free. They were not selling paper; they were selling a specific social outcome that no one else was willing to guarantee.

The Action Step

Complete your Onlyness statement: We are the only [category] that [unique capability] which means customers get [specific benefit]. Run it through the test: Is this meaningful? Is it defensible? Can you deliver it? Does it justify a higher price?

The Bridge

Your Onlyness is often found in the specific compliments or unique observations your customers leave in your testimonials. Use SayAbout.us to identify recurring themes in customer feedback. If multiple clients mention a specific part of your process that they have never seen anywhere else, that is your unique capability. The tool helps you discover your onlyness by listening to the market.