What Makes YOU So Special?
For a long time now business owners have been hearing about Unique Selling Proposition or
USP. Every marketing guru out there wants us all to know what makes people buy from us
instead of our competition. USP’s, after all, have helped many companies succeed and knowing
and articulating a business USP can really help the small business owner talk about their business
and advertise directly to their clients with confidence and generally just make that business stand
out in the market place.

But what happens when you are in a market that is highly competitive and your product looks
pretty much like everyone else’s product. Your product is good, you are pretty honest and your
service quality is excellent, but your product or service is floating around in the big gray market
place, looking just as gray as the stream you are all swimming in?
There are a tricks to thinking through the process of defining your USP so that you can
distinguish yourself a little from the competition. Your product may still be the same, but if you
can consider ways to make it just a little bolder you will be on your way to beating the
competition.

First let’s think about the process your customer goes through when she is picking your product
or service in the first place. The key here is to really understand your target market. Who do you
want to buy your product and what do you know about them? The more you know about them,
the better you will understand what they are looking for when they are choosing your product.
When you are doing this step don’t be afraid to engage your clients in the process. Create
surveys to send to your clients that will help you to understand them better and what they are
looking for when they are choosing the products you sell. Once you know what your clients are
looking for when they shop for your products, ask yourself how close your product or service
comes to their ideal. If you are selling blue widgets, and all your clients really want green ones,
make that slight change could make all the difference in your business and your USP could
become the fact that you give your clients exactly what they want.
So how does knowing your client relate to your USP? Once you understand that most of the
clients you really want to work with want green widgets, supplemental health insurance instead
of major medical, licensed this or bonded that, you can now specialize in what your target wants
and talk directly to them when you explain what makes you unique. Now they will hear you
because that is what they have been shopping for all along.

Now take a look around at the competition. What are they doing? Do they target the same
market as you or is their market slightly different? If they are swimming in your pool with your
products, how do theirs differ from your products. Remember very few things (except identical
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twins) are ever identical. Really identify what they are doing differently than you, and what they
are doing that looks exactly the same.

Find out where your competitors rank against you in sales. Are they outselling you with the
same product. If so, why? Is it their advertising, perhaps they are spending more, or maybe they
have charismatic spokes person, or something that just draws more attention to the product.
Remember you are not trying to make excuses for why they are doing better, you just want to
analyze facts. The facts will help you make decisions about how you can compete and create
your own uniqueness.

As you analyze your competition, ask yourself where you clearly out rank them. Where will you
never be able to compete with them. Make an exhaustive list of all the ways that you are the
same, and another list of all the ways you are different. Now, look for an edge. Based on what
you know about your target client, how can you stand out and be different? What will give you
an edge.
Now that you know where you rank against your competitor, look at areas in the “poorly”
column that you might make it your business to improve on. Whenever you analyze your
competition you will invariably find ways that with just a little effort you could become
competitive with them. When you find these areas, set that information aside for a future
“improvement” project.

Now let’s look at the “better or similar” column. There will be some areas that you are slightly
better at and there will be one or two things that just blows them out of the water. Take this list
and rank you and the competition from 1 - 10 with 10 being the best. In other words, perhaps
you are only slightly better in customer service so that would get a 4, while your competitor is a
7, but you have the best location in the city so that might be a 10. These are all areas that you do
either compete well in or do just slightly better, what you want to do now is to quantify just how
much better.

Make a list that might look something like this:

So competitor 2 has a better price for a less quality and competitor 1 has a better price than you
and although his quality is better than competitor 2 you score better on availability, customer
service and what the customer gets for the price of your product. The pattern that emerges here
is that you have a better quality product, (make sure this is objective information and not just
your opinion) that is value priced with good customer service and a great location and web site
interface. From this you can begin to see the Unique Selling Proposition develop.
This is a simple example and your business will undoubtedly take a little more effort to
determine a USP, but you can get a feel for the concept from this example. If you are in a highly
competitive market, I recommend that you hire an independent firm to do a good competitive
analysis so that you can really understand how to create a good USP you can talk about with
confidence.

The last step in creating your USP is wrapping your mind around it and making it part of your
marketing, your web site, your 30 second commercial, your tag line or wherever you can talk
about it. Making your USP part of your culture will ensure that the “buzz” about your business
is consistent. In the example above the USP should be all about the quality of the product,
convenience and what the client gets for the price. That should be what people hear from your
sales force.

Because many business owners, especially solopreneurs or small businesses, often skip the
analysis of what makes them different or better than their competition, when asked why someone
should do business with them they say “I am honest, I treat you right, my customer service is
impeccable, I have a great track record” and so on. None of those statements mean anything to
the clients you are targeting because this has all become “white noise”. We hear it all day long
and now in order to really get noticed you actually have to understand what makes you different
and it must make sense. Clients will pay more if they have to, but only if it makes sense, to do
so. It is up to you to make it “make sense” for them. So, what makes you so special?

Refined Perspectives/Coaching the Owner | Where Membership Matters! | 214-264-7146
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it | www.coachingtheowner.com