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…