Create A Unique Selling Proposition To Increase Profits - Part 7 Of 12
The next step in determining your USP is learning how your employees understand your business.
Sometimes your employees know more about what your customers are really buying than you do — especially your most successful sales people, observant customer service people, and employees who deal with customers on a daily basis. If your business is a sole proprietorship or you are an independent consultant, you will need to ask yourself these questions. But if you have a staff of any size — from 2 to 2,000 to 200,000 — you should conduct a staff meeting or survey, or find another way to get the majority of your staff to weigh in with answers to these questions.
Many staff members will have many ideas about what the right answers to these questions are. I’m not going to lie and say they’re all good ideas — but there’s a catch here. During the meeting, while your staff has momentum and is answering the questions, you need to treat every answer like a good answer. Get everyone’s opinion on the table. Make sure everyone who wants to speak is heard. Then — and only then, when you have all the answers at your disposal and the meetings are over — you can move forward and decide which answers are relevant answers to developing your USP, and which you can ignore for now. Oh, by the way, some of your answers weren’t so great either, so don’t get all full of yourself. 
As for deciding which answers will be helpful as you create your USP, I’ll have more advice below.
So the goal of this section is to identify any unique understandings your staff have of how your business serves your customers. There is some overlap with the previous set of questions — that is intentional and you may be surprised by the different answers you’ll get. So take notes.
1. Is there anything our business does that benefits the customer in the area of production, delivery, product quality, pricing, or extent of product line? How was that developed?
2. Are there any unique abilities among our staff that provide the customer with a unique benefit?
3. What has been our major marketing message to date? Is there a specific, compelling reason the customer should choose us? Is this front and center in every marketing and sales presentation?
4. Does our business have a unique advantage in any of these areas:
- Price? Are we lower than higher than our competitors? Why?
- Quality? Is our quality higher than our competitors? Why?
- Selection? Do we have the best selection? Be specific: is our selection better in brands, types, colors, styles, quantity, etc.?
5. Do we have a guarantee that puts the risk of doing business on us instead of on the competitor? Do we feature that in our sales and marketing?
6. Does our company make it easier for the customer to do business than the competition? How? What about within these areas:
- More customer education and teaching?
- Free consultations?
- Bonuses?
- Incentives?
- Better terms?
- Longer hours?
- More convenient locations?
- Better customer service and follow-up?
- Preferred treatment for preferred customers such as frequent buyer’s clubs, etc.?
- Better guarantee or return policy?
7. Is our customer service better than the competition’s? How? What about within these areas:
- More value-added service?
- Volume discount pricing?
- Unique system for resolving customer complaints?
- More education and more long-term relationships with customers?
8. Do we do anything special to continue delivering value to our customers independent of their recent purchases?
This is an excerpt from the article “Create a Unique Selling Proposition to Differentiate your Business and Increase Profits.” The complete 14 page article was put together to be the best how-to resource on the internet for creating an effective Unique Selling Proposition. By the time you finish the entire article, you’ll understand how to create the most powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal. It includes examples, a definition of this under-leveraged weapon, and how-to instructions for you to do it yourself.
To read the entire article, visit: http://www.freshlookinc.com/create-a-unique-selling-proposition/
Roy Furr is President of Fresh Look, Inc.
Fresh Look, Inc. helps small business owners increase sales without spending more money on advertising. Their unique system leverages hidden marketing assets in your business to create more sales. They help you implement in your business for the most success. All results are guaranteed with a better than risk free guarantee. For more details, visit http://www.FreshLookInc.com
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