As a business owner you will get many opportunities ranging from small-talk at a social function, one-on-one meetings to larger group presentations to tell potential clients about your business and the products/services that you offer. To take advantage of every opportunity you have to sell properly, you need to have a unique selling proposition for your business or products. The USP as it is called for short articulates in a few words what makes your product different or unique and the advantage your solution has over existing or competing products/services. Your USP should be clearly communicated throughout your organization, and all your employees should be able to articulate and communicate this USP in a powerful way. To develop and use a USP powerfully, you will need to do the following:

• Identify Conditions of Satisfaction: Good products and services are built around the real needs that customers have. Your ability to identify and connect with these needs during the period of product development takes you closer to creating a truly valuable product and makes it easier for the USP to emerge. By identifying the conditions of satisfaction – the things that customers want to have addressed by the product, or in other words – the problems that customers have that your product/service can address, you will begin to see what is truly unique about your offering. For example, the owner of a day care center decides to set his opening time at 5:00am for parents to drop off their children. He recognizes that most parents in his neighbourhood work far away from their homes and need to commute long distances to get to work – requiring them to leave their houses early. A day care that opens at 5:00am therefore has flexible and convenient working hours as a USP. Another example may be a consultant who works for small businesses and offers staggered payments for services rendered. She understands that SMEs typically struggle with cash flow, so staggered payments then represent what is unique about her product that aligns with the target customers’ conditions of satisfaction. To establish customers’ conditions of satisfaction, you may carry out a survey targeted at your potential customers to get some feedback regarding the key elements and considerations they have regarding a specific product or a specific challenge. The responses of this survey will give you an indication of what customers’ value and are concerned which will now drive your product design/development. Another way of looking at conditions of satisfaction is to try to identify the “typical” client that will need your services. What demographic do they belong? e.g. working mothers, single parents, busy executives, young adults, or even people living or working in a particular place or profession. Identifying this archetype of a client can help you discover the conditions of satisfaction better.
• Align your Offering: Now that you have identified the conditions of satisfaction for your prospective customers, the next step is to align your product/service with the conditions of satisfaction, similar to the examples of the day care and the SME consultant we just described. To achieve this you need to first be clear about which conditions of satisfaction will give you the highest potential – which of these conditions of satisfaction are under-served by your competitors or even if your competitors’ products meet them, you have some competitive edge that allows you do it even better. It means therefore that you will not build your USP around ALL the conditions of satisfaction; rather you will identify those conditions of satisfaction with the highest potential impact for you and then build your product and USP around same. Another consideration in aligning your offering with the conditions of satisfaction will be the resources you have at your disposal and essentially what works for you. Using the example of the day care, if you do not have employees who can resume at work at 430am, nor do you have the money to ensure that there is electric power available that early in the morning, then maybe trying to respond to that condition of satisfaction is not yet for you. Trying to do so may burn you out or leave you always struggling to offer great service.
• Build a Simple Pitch: Now you are crystal clear about what works and what doesn’t in your business and what makes your products/services unique, as well as the challenges and gaps that your product satisfies in the hearts and pockets of your customers. Armed with all of these you are ready to create your sales/marketing pitch based on this USP. Experience suggest that the best sales pitches typically consist of a problem/goal statement; three to five points built around your USP; and a powerful closing that calls potential clients to action. The powerful opening and closing help create an enduring emotional connection to your product while the three to five points in the middle present the hard facts that support the decision to select your product. Let’s use a restaurant as our example - The Point. The pitch may sound something like: “Everyone agrees that breakfast is the most important meal a day, yet statistics show that only 35% of workplace professionals eat a healthy breakfast each day”. “Our breakfast delivery service at The Point ensures that you get the right nourishment each morning based on our 1) Variety of menu options; 2) Early morning delivery; 3) Quality packaging and 4) Flexible Payment Options”. “Please review our exciting breakfast menu and delivery times and place your first order which will be delivered free for first time customers”. Using this approach, you should be able to craft a USP for your product by now. If you have products already and you never crafted a USP it is not too late – start by identifying what “issues” attract customers to your product, how your product responds to these issues in a unique way and create a powerful pitch that includes an engaging opening statement and call to action at the end.
• Communicate your Offering: Taking the time to reflect on your customers and products and craft a USP like we have just done is important, but like every message, what is even more important is getting your USP out there. The first place to start is with yourself and your employees. Everyone should be able to literarily sing the USP like a well synchronized choir singing from the same script. Take time to explain the line of thinking that created your USP, the actual elements of the USP and what it seeks to achieve. Explain the benefits to your employees and elicit feedback from them regarding the USP. Once you have the input and buy-in of your employees on your USP, communicate it at every opportunity you have: on posters and handbills that sell your products and every possible advertising and marketing platform that you use. If your business involves writing proposals ad making sales presentations ensure it is well captured in your sales proposals and presentations as the: “Five Reasons to Choose XYZ Limited”.

Having a USP is what really makes you a valuable service provider or product. Make these three to five reasons a part of your organizational culture and sell this message continuously to yourself, your employees, customers and prospects – you cannot go wrong.