Is Your Business Different?

Many businesses claim to be "better" than the competition. That's great. It might even by true, but HOW is it better? WHAT makes it better? Is that IMPORTANT TO ME?

I caught something of value I want to share in recent podcast of Read to Lead by Jeff Brown from his guest Sally Hogshead when discussing her book Fascinate.

Sally focuses on helping businesses identify their differences. At ActionCOACH we believe in this as well. That's why each client does a worksheet to define their Unique Sales Proposition or USP. While this can be challenging for some it is a crucial step to effective marketing. If the people in your business cannot define their uniqueness then the consumer is unlikely to do so. When this occurs your business looks like all the others which means purchasing decisions are left to chance.

When your target customer doesn't understand why they need your product it gets lost in all the other marketing messages. If they know they are looking for your type of product or service and don't know the difference then the only decision criteria they have is convenience and price.

What I really liked about Sally's comments was the suggestion to define your business in terms of a Verb - Noun structure. This forces us to be specific and simple which makes it much more obvious for the customer to recognize and decide.

For example, in my business I could go on an on about the benefits such as marketing performance, sales skills, financial knowledge, decision making and accountability. Or I could talk about how we do this with meetings, reading, education, worksheets, spreadsheets, etc. However when I say that we CLARIFY ACTIONS it makes it obvious to the business owner that we help them make better decisions to lead their business.

So with this in mind, HOW DO YOU DEFINE YOUR BUSINESS?