For a long time now business owners have been hearing about Unique Selling Proposition or USP. Every marketing guru, business coach, and small business consultant 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? As a life and small business coach, many of my clients fall into this category and I can tell you, it can be very challenging for an insurance broker or financial planner to distinguish herself from the pack, but it can be done.
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. This is where finding a good executive coach or business consultant can really be helpful, since most of us have a very difficult time looking objectively at our target client. In the mind of the average business owner, everyone is a target, but what you want to figure out is who is your best target and that can be difficult to do alone.
In the absence of a good business coach, you can 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, making 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. (if you are in a very competitive market or business, there are small business consultants out there who do only competitive analysis and it may be worth the investment just to know what they are doing) 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 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:
You Comp 1 Comp 2
Price 6 7 9
Product or service Quality 8 6 3
Availability 7 5 6
Website appearance 10 8 7
Delivery speed 7 7 7
Customer service 8 6 7
Value for price 9 7 6
Location 8 5 3
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?
Author Resource:-
Sharon Schierling MBA, Certified Life and Small Business Coach specializing in working with small business owners, executives and solopreneurs. Offering full one-on-one coaching both in personal and virtually. Also providing inexpensive alternatives for virtual coaching. For more information visit http://www.coachingtheowner.com
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