261: Honing Our Unique Selling Proposition

<p>Every minute, there is more and more competition for the same clients, so we need to differentiate ourselves very clearly.  I see new competitors entering the market all of the time, even during Covid.  You would think at least during Covid, things would quieten down a bit on the competitor front, but no.  Existing competitors are getting more and more desperate, so they start giving everything away and this puts tremendous pressure on pricing. What we absolutely don’t want is for the buyer to think they can just swap another company’s solution in to replace us.  The price fight is the path to oblivion.  We have to change the competition battlefield to value, instead of pricing.</p> <p> </p> <p>We need our USPs to be crisp and sharp to make sure the buyer knows we are different and better than the competition.  We need to point out what we are offering that they are not. One of the dangers of selling the same line up of products over a number of years is we become numb to their special characteristics.  When we first start out studying the product range we are excited, we are desperate to get a clear understanding of the lineup, so we can explain its features and benefits to the buyer.  Over time that freshness decays. We also get lured into a price discussion with the client.</p> <p> </p> <p>When crafting our Unique Selling Proposition we need to look at things from the buyer’s perspective.  It is no help talking about what we sell.  That is tremendously interesting to us, but more importantly what is of interest to the buyer? We can get bogged down in the nitty gritty of the spec, the detail, the data.  More importantly, we want to know what are they trying to buy?  What problems do they need help solving?  Where do they need more value?  When do they need it?</p> <p> </p> <p>For example, in our own case, we may think we sell sales training, but what company buyers want is to receive greater per head sales revenue outcomes from their salespeople.  We sell outcomes and the training service is the tool to achi