"When everything is equal, people buy on price," Michael Porter said at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Tech 2006 conference this summer.

If you aren't interested in providing your services for the market's lowest price, you need to be different from the other accounting firms and professionals in your market. Some ways to differentiate yourself or your firm are: being first, owning an attribute, being a leader (perhaps not first but the most expert, etc.) and having a market specialty. In addition, you can differentiate yourself or your firm by price, quality, customer orientation, creativity or breadth of product, however, it is more difficult to differentiate yourself based on these characteristics (just ask the airlines!). The advantage of being different is that when everything is unequal, people do NOT buy on price!

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