“Why should I buy from you?” is a question that every sales guy gets asked at least once a week by potential prospects they meet. It’s a pretty fair question that every business owner must definitely spend time on. Every business needs a unique selling proposition (USP) that not only helps you convince prospects why they need you, but also helps businesses in shaping their marketing and pricing strategies; not to mention their operational budgeting and expenses.
So how should you decide on the right USP for your product or service? Should you call yourself the most affordable? Or should you convince prospects that you have the best quality? There is no one good answer simply because if all businesses picked the same USP, then it would not be unique after all. The following tips will help you evaluate the market and identify the right USP for your business.
What’s lacking in the market today?
Who are your biggest competitors? Rather than analyzing why their customers picked them, try to look at prospects they reached out to
who did not sign up with them
. Analyzing the requirements of these customers will give you an idea of what is lacking in the market today. Probably all the major competitors are pricey. Or, it is likely that they are all located far away from where the prospect is. A proper interpretation of this will help you understand why certain prospects do not sign up to competitors and could help you chart a USP for your own business.
What’s the biggest complaint among customers?
Websites like
Yelp
and
BBB
provide you with pretty comprehensive reviews from customers about various businesses. This is a goldmine to know the psyche of an unhappy customer. What are the factors that disgruntle a majority of customers your competition works with? Is it about their quality? Is it about customer service? Use the reviews to map out the various parameters and identify the most common complaints and use this information to design an USP for your own business.
What do you think ails your industry?
In some cases, you as an industry insider would know things that are not noticed by customers. Jay Barnett, the founder of commercial carpet cleaning company
Priority Floor Care
says that in his industry, the quality of job offered is directly proportional to the technology used. In an email interview, Jay tells us that his company marketed their use of an advanced carpet cleaning technology because this was not available with a lot of their competitors. Such USPs also help businesses price themselves higher since B2B customers are not as price sensitive as retail customers and are thus more inclined to pay for quality.
Regardless of what USP you pick for your business, the most important thing to remember is that the success of your business depends on how much you live up to your promise. A business that claims to be the most affordable has to deliver a cost-effective job. Similarly, a business that charges a premium for high end customers needs to deliver a top notch job. So a final point of advice would be to only pick a USP that you can stick to and deliver for your customers.
