What Most Miss About Their Unique Selling Proposition
One of the most powerful marketing and business advantages you can give yourself that accelerates the sales process and dampens, and often nearly eliminates, price resistance is the USP or unique selling proposition. Candidly, most can’t articulate one because they don’t HAVE one. This is not to be overlooked or skipped over. The question “Why should I choose you over all other IT firms?” is one you MUST be able to answer succinctly and powerfully if you hope to win business away from competitors.
It’s important to know that most companies are not “born” with a USP and must strategically MANUFACTURE one. Further, a USP is not a tagline. If you can communicate your USP in a single sentence, like “Fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed,” you REALLY have something. But most cannot summarize their USP that way and must, instead, create a list of reasons. This Marketing Example is our USP summarized on a single page we give prospects in our Shock-And-Awe box.
Because this is so important, and because so many struggle with it, I thought it worthwhile to do a review of this marketing fundamental. Let me remind you of my four-point litmus test for a powerful USP. It must be unique to you, it must have meaningful specifics, it must have a strong appeal to your target market and it must be defensible before the prospect buys. Let’s break these down…
As Ogilvy famously said, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent 80 cents out of your dollar.” John Caples wrote, “If the headline is poor, the copy will not be read. And copy that is not read does not sell goods.” All true.
Ah, the age-old whine of the failing salesperson: 
EVERY salesperson has gotten the dreaded “I want to think it over” response. Problem is, how do you respond politely and without annoying the prospect to the point of them telling you to go to hell? Most salespeople just roll over and say, “Okay! Call me if you have any questions,” which is essentially abandoning the sale. Not good. So what is the secret to overcoming sales objections like this one?
The headline is “the ad for the ad.” It’s the device that, if well-written, will stop the right reader-prospect in their tracks and get them involved in reading your campaign and taking action. In the example above, I could have written “How To Get Your Wife To Chase You Around The Bedroom Like A Horny Teenager” and gotten even more response than with the one I used. I could have even pivoted off that as an example of the importance of headlines; however, I would have attracted the WRONG person with the WRONG proposition – i.e., a desperate husband looking for a little more love in his life (to put it politely). 
There is no doubt about it: Robin Robins has helped more MSPs and IT services businesses to double – even triple – sales, profits and MRR growth than any other marketing consultant in the IT services industry, period.As a trusted advisor to over 10,000 IT services business owners for over 17 years, Robin knows a thing or two about what it takes to grow sales, recurring revenue streams and a profitable client base for an IT services business.