No matter where you are, what you do and what you sell - the chances are better than good that you are selling commodities.  If you are not the only people on the planet selling what you sell, it's a commodity.  Oh, perhaps yours has a nicer label, logo or color scheme.  Maybe your manufacturing process has a little something extra that gives it that competitive edge.  No matter.  If I can get what you sell somewhere else, it's a commodity.  A light bulb is a light bulb; a car is a car; insurance is insurance; a tractor is a tractor; furniture is furniture; a steak dinner is a steak dinner, etc.  What separates one brand from another is not so much the product or service, but how one sells that product or service.  Remember - if you can't change what you sell, you must change how you sell it. 

Understanding that you are selling a commodity is the first step to understanding how to decommoditize yourself.  And decommoditizing yourself means you are no longer selling stuff - you are providing one-of-a-kind solutions. 

Here's the formula for Decommoditizing and becoming "uniquely you." 

1.  Take the focus off of your product or service and put the focus on the experience.  Studies show that across most industries, consumers forget the names of the people and even the place they bought their stuff from within two weeks of their purchase.  They may remember what they paid for it, but they can't remember who they bought it from!  Just today while in Miami, I was eating lunch with two attendees from the event I spoke at.  They were talking about a cruise they recently took.  I asked them the name of the cruise line and they could not tell me who it was.  The cruise and the cruise line are mere commodities.  If you make the process special and the experience memorable, your customers will talk about YOU and not about the stuff you sell.  This is the first step to building a powerful, emotional brand.

2.  Move from transactional to experiential.  You are not exchanging goods and services for currency.  You are making a trade - Your solutions for their money.  And if the solution is special and extremely valuable, they are more than happy to part with their money because it is a High Value Proposition for them.  When Starbucks began losing business during the first half of 2008 and they closed 900 stores and let over 13,000 employees go, everyone thought it was the economy.  "People aren't willing to pay that kind of money for a cup of coffee, right?"  One Wall Street analysts' response to that was - "It has nothing to do with the economy.  The problem is it's no longer a unique experience.  People are willing to pay a premium price for a premium experience."