What makes your company, your product or your service different from your competition? 

What makes what you offer better than similar offerings by other companies in the marketplace? 

What makes you stand out from the crowd? 

Good questions. Questions you need to answer if you’re going to market and sell yourself, your company, your products and your services successfully. 

Identifying your unique selling proposition 

So where do you begin? Start with the problem(s) you solve. Everything else flows from there. 

Define your target audience. What are the difficulties they encounter on a regular basis?

If you sell to: 

• C-level financial types, their biggest headache might be timely reporting or closing out a budget cycle.
• Independent professionals, they may need the most help with their marketing and sales efforts.
• Human resources managers, they may be looking for help with employee benefits packages.
• Small business owners and managers, their struggle may be to increase their sales, their profits and their customer loyalty.
• Operations managers, new efficiencies may be elusive. 

Businesspeople generally look for (better) ways to streamline operations, save time, find more qualified employees, foster higher employee and customer retention, increase sales and reduce costs – and all the variations and expansions on those areas of concern. 

If you’re selling in the business-to-consumer arena, priorities for your customers might involve: 

• Making them more attractive
• Saving them money
• Keeping them ahead of the fashion curve
• Keeping their property secure and weather-safe
• Reducing the amount of work they need to do
• Saving time
• Enhancing the value of their homes
• Increasing their earning capacity
• Staying (or getting) fit
• And so on. 

Take it one step at a time 

So if these are the problems your target customers want to solve, how can you differentiate yourself from the crowded field of competitors? I think there are just five main steps to answering that question. 

Step 1. Be clear about who you serve. For the sake of moving forward in this article, let’s assume you know who that is. 

Step 2. Clearly define what problems you solve. Try this exercise: 

On a piece of paper make two lists. One list is all the things you do to “increase” something for your customers. The other list is everything you do to “decrease” something for your customers. Call these two lists the “tangible benefits you provide” to your customers. 

The items on these lists are the results or outcomes you are promising to your customers. They are the solutions you provide to your customers’ problems. 

Examples of items on that list might be: 

·         Increase sales

·         Enhance company image

·         Increase stockholder dividends

·         Increase customer retention

·         Decrease costs

·         Decrease customer complaints

·         Decrease time to market

·         Decrease employee absenteeism. 

Step 3. Find out how your customers are currently trying to solve those problems. Ask your customers questions about how they’re doing things now. Help them prioritize their problems and place value on solving them – or put a cost on continuing to do things the way they’re doing them now. 

Step 4. Determine how your solution (product or service) is better than the rest. Do a competitive analysis and draw some conclusions about how and why your solution is superior to the rest. Show how your solution gets the job done better, faster, with less disruption, at lower total cost of implementation, etc. 

Step 5. Communicate that advantage effectively to your target audience. Use your marketing materials, your sales team, your customer service reps, customer testimonials, news releases – every means at your disposal – to clearly state what makes you, your product or service and your company special. 

Hold your position

You can even take this a step further by defining your position in the market. Positioning gives you and your customer-facing employees a standard for expressing your unique selling proposition. Taking it to this level means that your message will be the same no matter who’s delivering it. Having established your position, you’ll be able to clearly state to prospects what exactly you can do for them that your competition can’t. 

Know who your customers are, focus on their problems, define the tangible benefits you provide and state them clearly. Your unique selling proposition and how you position your solution will define who you are and what you offer to those who truly need what you offer. 

Ó 2005 Patrick A. Hassett. All rights reserved.