Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

Moriarty, Yes Please! Thank you!

No problem. Please be warned that most businesses don't have a USP because they lack self-belief. Either that or they're believing in the wrong things (like being cheaper, or offering things that they simply can't present). For an effective USP you need to know what you do that nobody else does, and that your best customers need of you. There is a list of questions below that will help me to define who you are and who they are - in general terms at least. Whatever, it will help you brand yourselves in a way that means you only need present your business once with your advertising. Not seven times as is often said of getting branding messages across.

Questions - and please stop reading if you feel they're too intrusive! Not everybody can stand the heat of a Moriarty's stare. I am human, and I can make mistakes. You have been warned.

Okay: the basics - who are you, what do you sell, to whom and where?

Getting nasty: - why would someone choose you to buy from? How do you stand out from the crowd of also-rans who push boardrooms for a living? [my take on pushing brooms, by the way - they're the sort of directors who'd be better employed as filing clerks for all the imagination and flair they bring to their work.]

Getting really nasty: what can you do that nobody else on the planet can do? What have you gotten into trouble for in the last 12 months? [any decent entrepreneur will land themselves in hot water at least once a year. The point is to learn from the experience, not whine about how hot it was in there.]

As you work from nice to nasty, the answers will become significantly less easy to uncover. That in part is because they're things you do all the time, and is the one reason that your best customers come to your business. However, it will be mundane and it will be the sort of thing you imagine every other business doing as normal - believe me, doing "normal" things is something that few businesses actually do.

Have you had time to check out the webinars?

I will try to be nice with my answers, only this is a small comment box and being human, I can make mistakes. Actually, I do because the moderator has put me on censure for it.

What do you do or sell or provide that ONLY you do, sell or provide? How far or high abov industry norms or averages do you do? What is it that's importnt to your clients and what do YOU think is important to them? Hint: what you think is irrelevant, what REALLY matters is what buyers think.

What can you say about your product that sets your solutiuon apart from every other provider in your niche or market segment? What do your buyer say about you that sets you apart? What data do you have to support any of these assumptions and assertions? If you have none, work with someone who can get you this kind of help. Let me know if you need the details of a company that can do this.