Today I wanted to talk a bit about the universal sales pitch, and about your unique selling points, and how to use them in sales. These are vital to selling yourself and making sure that there is a market for your products and services. Just a reminder for those of you actively selling at the moment, nearly all of us have fallen foul to this at some point!
We all get to a time when we’ve told so many people about our job, company, service or product, that we start paraphrasing and making assumptions that potential clients know what we’re talking about as well as we do. We give the same elevator pitch we’ve used a thousand times, to the point we don’t really hear what we’re saying anymore. It worked before, why change it? We already have the perfect universal sales pitch, right?
Well, you need to periodically go back to the drawing board! We forget to re-engage with our existing customers and ask them why they use us. Why are we special to them? Over the last six months, the five USP’s I previously used are no longer the same ones I sell myself on now. Why? Because I sat with clients and asked the brutal question, “Why am I needed in your business, and why are my services important to you?” I was quite surprised by the feedback. The three points I believed to be the most important, didn’t even rank in the top five!
So where does this leave our unique selling points? Well, let’s go back to the beginning. Try and remember that customers will see different strengths to your products and services depending on their own unique position and will value you in ways that maybe you haven’t considered. Ask someone who doesn’t know your services, or may not even need what you offer, to play devils advocate for you. Get them to listen to you answering all of the following questions, then order them by importance. The more input from different people, the better. Then re-write your USPs accordingly!
So, let’s ask ten simple questions and see if you have the same opinions and importance rankings as your clients: –
- Who are you?
- What do you do?
- How do you do it?
- Why are you a leader in your industry?
- Are you even a leader in your industry?
- What makes you different?
- What makes you better?
- Why should someone give you their hard earned money over a competitor?
- What is the value of what you have to offer?
- Where is the return?
Only when you have been through these properly, will you understand why clients have come to you before and will come back again, and how you can attract more of the same (or maybe attract a different demographic, if that is in fact the goal!).