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How to Create Million Dollar USPs For Your Clients In 57 Minutes or Less.

Clarify Your Marketing Message, Craft A 30 second Elevator Speech, Align Your Business Image With Its Operations, And then sell, Sell, SELL in RECORD time Without Doing Hardly Anything at All

I kid-you-not … if you can craft a powerful USP that hits a home run in the mind of your client's customers, you’ve found the one thing that can bring them out of obscurity into the spotlight of fame. It’s pure marketing gold. A good USP can take an unknown “nobody” and miraculously turn him into a famous “somebody.” It’s the difference that can take a product or service from “good” to a marketing “great.” A great USP will not make the cash register ring, but it will make that sucker sing. Without a doubt, it is one of the core marketing vehicles through which great financial fortunes are made. Together we are going to craft a powerful USP for your business that can do all those things and take your financial fortunes to the highest possible levels. We’re going to do that by increasing sales. We’re going to increase your sales by crafting a compelling, memorable introduction for your product or service that will having everyone aching to try you. In the next 50 minutes, you'll hear me interview Mr. Bill Bodri a international marketing consultant and professor. Bill had written the book called How to Write A Million Dollar USP. Get ready because in this recording you'll have a clear understanding of the subject and some additional tips other then in your HMA training on how to develop killer USPs for your clients. This recording is 50 minutes short. Enjoy

Michael: Now, really is this USP that big of a deal. Can it really make a dramatic difference in a business?

Bill: This is the number one most important thing before you do anything else with a marketing consultant deal. You get them to sit down and you figure out what in the world these guys stand for because if they can’t differentiate themselves, if they don’t have reasons they’re different, then you can get the sales scripting, you can get the copywriting, you can go the media, cross promoting, community marketing – because nobody knows why you’re different, why you. So, the very first thing you do is you have to say, “What does your business stand for?” And, that’s the USP, and that’s the basis around all the marketing efforts. So, you’ve got to get that defined first.

Hi, this is Michael Senoff. I want to welcome all the HMAT consultants to another exclusive interview on the subject of USP. This is an interview with an expert on the subject, Mr. Bill Bodri. I’m sure after this listening to this recording, you’re going to have even more clarity on how to develop killer USPs for your clients. Enjoy !

Michael: Why should these HMA consultants listen to you about this USP? Tell me a little bit about your background and how this whole USP course came along.

Bill: Well, Mike, like most marketing consultants, I initially worked in a lot of different fields – finance, healthcare, and things like that until I settled into the marketing field. And, now I do marketing consulting in the US, and I also teach in China at China University which is the number one Marketing and Journalism school over there. But, in dealing with most of my clients, the first thing that you find out that they have to do is they have to get a handle on what their businesses and what’s going to set it apart from the competition.

In order to do that, it all focuses on the USP, and there’s a big gap in the marketplace on explaining what in the world a USP is. So, what I’ve decided to do is spent about one or two years pulling together all the information out there on what a USP is and how to craft it to make each business very different and unique so we can attract customers versus your pizza stand which is the guy next door, and I put it into the manual. It’s the only manual out there that explains how in the world you actually craft your USP.

Michael: And, what does USP stand for, and what are some of the other acronyms that you’ve heard out there for something meaning the same thing.

Bill: Well, the term USP stands for Unique Selling Proposition, and it was coined by Rosser Reeves who was a real big advertising great in the early 1950s and ‘60s, but a lot of people refer to it as the customer buying advantage because it’s what the buying advantage is for the customer to buy from you versus somebody else. Some people just call it USP – Unique Selling Proposition. There’s all sorts of terms for it – competitive advantage, sometimes just it call it your opportunity niche. There’s all sorts of terms like that. But, basically, it’s what sets you apart from other people that in the customer’s viewpoint is the reason to come to you rather than a competitor – what’s the big promise that you’re going to deliver for them.

Michael: Tell me, what’s the difference between a powerful USP and a USP that’s just not powerful.

Bill: Well, a lot of people will just say, “We’re the best at this.” Or “We’re number one at that.” But, there’s all sorts of just regular terms that don’t mean anything to anybody, and so for instance I’ll use the example of pizza once again where you can have a city and it can have 10 or 15 little pizza joints, and why should somebody go into one versus another. Sometimes it’s because of the taste, location or what have you. But, sometimes everybody knows, “Well, this pizza joint has something a little, a little bit different”, but that little difference magnifies into a big difference in sales. And, what makes a USP great versus good is something that really taps into what exactly the consumers want. You hit the hot spot of the consumers. It might be just one little word difference in the advertising or how your business is presented to the customers, and that little one word difference or two words or three words or the color of your truck or what have you can magnify sales incredibly.

So, a great USP is something that has these characteristics that really hit those hot buttons of consumers that really, really draw them in like a magnet. What Rosser Reeves said was the proposition has to be very strong that it can move the mass millions, and he said it has to be a proposition that your competitors can not offer. It has to be unique. But, people like Doug Hall who has come up with the book, “Jumpstart Your Business Brain”, which is probably the best book on the research of the idea in the USP since Rosser Reeves. He’s come up with the idea that you can only really have at most two promises in a USP, and in general you can’t make a USP too complicated because most people they just want to remember something simple. They don’t want to remember anything complicated. They can’t. People are inundated with anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 marketing message a day.

So, for your USP to hold and stick, for it to be a sticky USP, it’s got to be something that’s very, very simple, but also it has to sort of hit that hot spot or that sweet spot.

Michael: Let’s go into some of the characteristics. Number one – your USP must scream the big benefit, over benefit, ultimate benefit, for the customer. Can you expound on that?

Bill: Well, the big reasons customers come to you is because you’re promising them something. So, what you have to figure out when you’re crafting a USP is what is it that they want, that you’re going to supply? And, the more avert your benefit, the bigger it is, the more juicy it is. That’s what’s going to attract more customers versus if you just said, “Okay, pizza here.” If you said, “Two for one pizza.” That’s very, very different USP. We just sort of magnified it because we’ve put in for instance a price advantage for buying over here versus someplace else, versus “Freshest Ingredients Pizza”.

But, what you have to do in a USP is you have to figure out what the benefits are that the customers want for that particular business or industry, and you have to figure out what’s the biggest benefit you can promise to the customer, and then you make your USP focused around that particular benefit. Because you’re trying to find out what’s the honey that’s going to make a customer attracted to you. The bees are going to come for the honey. What’s that particular make of honey or flower? Once you find that, and make it as big as possible, that’s what’s going to be the focus of the USP.

Michael: But, let’s got to number two. Your USP must set you up as being unique and dramatically different from your competitors.

Bill: Well, the big thing is most businesses are pretty much the same in one sense. If they don’t advertise, if they don’t set themselves up as being different, then you won’t need to cost companies. For instance, you might have a number of dry cleaners in the city, and if they’re all doing the same thing, well, there’s no reason to go from one versus the other. If two businesses are exactly the same, one of them is redundant.

So, what you have to do is you – for whatever business you’re consulting for or for whatever business you’re running – you have to find out some way that makes it stand out as unique and dramatically different. All right? And, maybe that’s some revolutionary twist or new to the world reason that you know your company or your services are different from other people’s, because that interest factor is what’s going to make people interested and excited to come to you. That’s the importance of this.

Michael: Your USP must be focused – don’t try to appeal to everyone.

Bill: Well, the big thing is a lot of people make the mistake in marketing that you try to appeal to absolutely everyone. It’s sort of a shotgun approach. And, especially marketing consultants – they quickly find out that that’s the worse thing you can possibly do. What you really want to do is don’t try to sell to everybody. In fact, there’s some customers you don’t want. What you want to do is you want to figure out what’s the customer segment that you want to focus on, that you want to service, and just target them. It might be 30 percent of the market or 40 percent of the market. If you try to appeal to the entire market, you often end up diluting your message so you don’t appeal to anybody at all because you don’t stand for anything.

So, what you really should do is you really should be focused and focused on the service offering as well as the market you’re trying to serve. Don’t worry about trying to serve everybody. Usually when you do niche marketing like this, when you’re focused, you usually make umpteen times the profits with much less work and effort.

Michael: So, give my HMA consultants some advice. They’re consultants. So, what you’re saying from what I understand is don’t go out there and be a consultant to any business that comes along. Niche yourself and be a consultant for the storage set industry, or a consultant for swimming pool wholesalers, or a consultant for beauty salons where you specify that you’re an expert marketing consultant consulting only with beauty salons.

Bill: Exactly. For instance, I have a friend who does the pool and spa business, and I have another friend I helped him become a marketing consultant, and he’s getting into landscape marketing. So, he’s producing an entire course on landscape marketing, and that’s what’s going to be his niche. So, rather than appeal to everybody, he’ll focus his efforts on becoming the nationwide premier marketing expert for landscaping. And, you can do this with all sorts of businesses. I mean, there’s a lot of people who are marketing consultants for chiropractors, lawyers, accountants. There’s all sorts of fields. You don’t have to pick the very competitive fields, but there’s got to be one or two fields that you really, really like that are missing marketing experts. And, if you really like it, get into that field. You’ll end up having more fun, more revenues, more free time, less work, more renowned than if you just a regular general consultant.

Now, the idea of becoming a general consultant is okay when you’re first starting and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, the people who are really successful at it usually have some niche market that they focused on. If you’re a general consultant, you’re only really, really super duper successful usually in terms of the revenues, if you’re already famous like a Jay Abraham or what have you or Dan Kennedy. But, it takes lots of years to get to that particular position.

Michael: You said something important and I’m thinking, if I’m going to be specifically a marketing consultant for beauty salon, as I consult and produce results for one, two or three beauty salons, my plan is already pretty much laid out. So, by the time I get my next client, everything’s laid out exactly for what that next beauty salons going to do because I’ve already done it for the beauty salon industry.

Bill: Exactly, and what you can do is you can build on that. In fact, what you can do is because you have experience with two or three of these, you can then number one get testimonials, and number two create an information product for beauty salons and start writing articles and get a reputation for “You are the beauty salon consultant that everybody should turn to.” And, you’ve got a kit and you can start selling a kit through the Internet and have an income that way which will generate leads. There’s all sorts of things you can do, but it all starts with being focused and finding a niche, not trying to appeal to everybody. Granted when you’re just getting started, you have to get your feet wet, you might have to appeal to everyone just to see what comes your way, but if you’re really, really targeted all the marketing consultants out there will tell you that’s when things really start to skyrocket.

Michael: Okay, relevancy, relevancy, relevancy is the name of the game you say.

Bill: Yeah, well, it doesn’t make sense in a USP to be trumpeting something that’s not important to people. For instance, you can say, “Raincoats, we have all the black raincoats in New York City – more black rain coats than anybody else.” Well, people don’t care what the color of the rain coats are. It’s not really important. It’s not a relevant customer concern. So, you can’t focus on your USP, you can’t focus it on something that’s not really relevant to the customer. If the customers don’t care about it, it’s not really something that should be in your USP. There are some things that you care about in your business, and you think it’s important, but if you champion that as the center of the USP, and it’s not important to the customers, you’re being misguided with your efforts.

What you want to do is if it’s really important to your business, you have to find some way to turn it around so that the customers know that that’s important and then twisting that and bringing it some how into the forefront of the USP. For instance, let’s say you go out when you’re sourcing something for a customer and you go and you check 300 suppliers for one particular product. Let’s say it’s a ski thing, some type of ski boot or whatever – so, what you have to do is you have to – a customer doesn’t care how many people you check. Unless you bring it to the forefront in your advertising and say, “For every product we sell, we have evaluated anywhere from 54 to 300 different manufacturers to bring you the top ones.” Now all of a sudden, you’ve become a consumer buying advocate for these products, and they’ll trust your opinion.

But, generally, if that type of information wasn’t important to them or they don’t really care, maybe it’s just a regular commodity, you don’t focus on it. But, if it is something that’s very important and it makes you different and it’s something that you’re doing, but the customer doesn’t know about, bring to the surface in the USP, or if not in the USP itself, certainly in your marketing materials in general to help promote your firm.

Michael: Great. Short and simple is best. Memorable and easy to understand is what matters.

Bill: Yeah. When people have USPs, like I said, they’re usually short and snappy, most people remember the Federal Express USP “When it absolutely has to be there overnight.” It’s usually one or two sentences. If your USP is longer than that, people aren’t going to remember it. It’s got to be simple enough that people can remember it, understand it, and they’ll think about one or two words in it, and they just say, “Op, that’s these guys.” And, they remember it and they come back to you.

If it’s very, very complicated, it’s not going to be easy to communicate, it’s not going to be memorable, and it’s just going to fail.

Michael: What do you mean by, “must be perfumed with credibility”?

Bill: Well, the big idea of a lot of people don’t really realize this with USPs, but today the customer doesn’t believe anything from anybody because they’re just inundated with marketing messages. So, what you need in your USP, if you can instill it in your USP is a real reason for people to believe you. So, let’s take a look at for instance the good old Domino’s Pizza’s USP, and the Federal Express USP. Most people talk about these USPs, but they don’t really pick up on them.

Now, the Federal Express USP is “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” And, most people don’t realize the fact that they repeat it “Positively absolutely” puts some credibility into that USP. People are like saying, “Huh, well, yeah I guess if they said it twice like that it must really be true.” Do you see what I mean?

Michael: Yeah.

Bill: That USP is perfumed with some credibility. The Domino’s Pizza is “We’ll give you the delivery in 30 minutes or less guaranteed.” Now, the credibility factor in that is number one they quoted you an exact number of minutes. It would’ve been better if they quoted 31 minutes or 32 because research shows that being specific with the numbers is better than just being general. Then, they use the word “guaranteed”. So, in that USP, there is reasons for people to actually believe you.

So, for instance, when people are doing marketing, let’s say copywriting or marketing, in general, there’s all sorts of ways you try to prove that what you’re saying is true. There’s endorsements. There’s referrals, sworn statements and Mike, I’m sure you’ve seen on the Internet people will actually have photocopies of their notarized statements or awards or checkbooks.

Michael: Sure.

Bill: And, there’s warranties. There’s guarantees, product demonstrations – all sorts of things – exact measurements, statistics. There’s all sorts of things that you try to incorporate either in the USP or in your marketing in general that gives credibility. If you don’t have this credibility factor in there, try to work it in there in some sort of way psychologically or not psychologically. It can be overt or not overt. For instance, when we say, the one they use for diamonds, “Diamonds-

Michael: “Diamonds are forever.”

Bill: Yeah, “Diamonds are forever.” There you go. The connotation is well, you’re thinking, “Yeah, diamond is the hardest substance on the earth.” You’re thinking love. You want it to last forever. There’s sort of this connotation that there’s the credibility that, “Yeah, diamonds are the hardest substance on the earth. They’ll last forever, ergo my love will last forever.”

Michael: Right.

Bill: You see, they didn’t come out directly with it, but they came out with it in some sort of psychological underniche, and people don’t realize that this is a key factor to the USP that most people don’t even bother to work into it. However, it’s very easy to work into it if you just say, “guaranteed.” Guaranteed 30 days or less, and then people say, “Okay, there’s a guarantee, I believe them.”

Michael: Okay, you have here, “USP must be compelling enough to get people to act.” Can we fit something in a short USP to get people to act? What do you mean by that?

Bill: Well, once again, if you’re targeted to a certain market segment or certain niche of the market, there’s a certain thing that they want. The promise has to be something that they want. Now, generally, you’re not going to necessarily drum up pizza, they idea of “I’ve got to buy pizza tonight.” But, when they want pizza, you want them to remember you, and you basically like Rosser Reeves says you want that USP to move the people to buy you, but if not, you want them to generally desire. It’s when they have the desire for the product, you want them to think of you.

So, when that desire arrives for the particular need for your product, for instance a pain reliever, a headache medicine, you want them to think of you first, and so you want that USP to be compelling enough or attractive enough that it moves them to buy your brand. It would be great if you could put two together where you’re actually are inflating desire, but the actual meaning of this is basically when they have the desire, you want them to have your USP attractive enough that they are attracted to fulfilling their need or desire through your particular product.

So, for instance, Rosser Reeves, he created the one for Anacin. I remember, you and I are old enough, we remember “Anacin – the pain reliever that doctors recommend most.”

Michael: Right.

Bill: Well, if you have a headache, you’re thinking, “Gosh, which one do I buy”, and then you would think, “Okay, the one doctors would recommend. That’s going to help me fulfill my desire.”

Michael: Yeah, and that’s got the credibility built right in.

Bill: Exactly. It’s got the credibility built right in, and you’re like, “I want one that really, really works. So, that’s going to move me, this one, because the doctor’s recommending this one most.”

Michael: This next one the HMA consultants can relate to because this is actually the second step of the system and that’s integrating the USP. Your USP should penetrate all aspects of your business. Is that the same thing as integrating your USP into your business?

Bill: Yeah, you know a lot of people don’t focus on this. This is one of the big things that I focus in my own USP manual is the fact that most people you can create a USP and it just sits there and the actual reality of your business can be divorced from the words of the USP. But, actually, let’s say our USP involves speedy service. You better organize your firm that you’re going to give speedy service. So, you better organize internally the management of your firm, your trucks, everything such that you can really satisfy and deliver on that USP.

For instance, when I’m in China, we were dealing with a factory and we were producing chemicals and we were looking at how we wanted to create more speed delivery, and we wanted more quality in terms of packaging, and what we had to do was we had to do basically then in order to do more speedy service, we had to have more inventory. Not only that, but we had to go to two shifts instead of one shift in terms of production. So, that idea of the USP is we’re going to promise you speedier delivery, then we have to go back to your firm and you have to make sure that your firm is organized in such a way to deliver on that USP. Your USP should be in the color of the uniforms that people wear, your office what it looks like.

For instance, if you’re a doctor, you’re consulting with doctors, and this is a really big problem with a lot of doctors or even nutritionists, you walk in the office and it looks terrible. It looks ugly. The connotation in people’s minds right away is this guy can’t help me with healthcare because his unhygienic if he’s this messy. So, people walk out. So, the idea of no matter what you’re saying for the USP, you have to penetrate the business in all sorts of aspects.

Michael: Okay, let’s do one more. If your USP isn’t economically feasible, then look again.

Bill: Product lifecycles now are extremely short. It used to be a product could last five years, eight years. Then, it shot down to two years. Now, with the Internet, there’s some products especially in the high-tech industry, the lifecycle is just several months, every six months, eight months. If you’re going to create a whole business around a product that has such a short lifecycle like that, you might be in trouble.

So, what you want is you want a USP for a particular product or service that the business itself has to be able to last long enough, and the USP has to last long enough because you’re going to be promoting it everywhere. You don’t want the whole market buying criteria to be shifted underneath you because all the money you spend and invest in advertising and promoting your USP will then go under the water. It will be useless, flushed down the drain, if the whole criteria changes.

So, you want the USP has to be an economically feasible USP that you can recover all the costs of marketing it and promoting it.

Michael: Okay, great. Now, let’s get to the juicy stuff. My HMA guys want to know the easiest ways. They want methods how to develop and create a million dollar USP packed with emotional voltage. Can we go through some of these methods starting with the Roy Williams competitive comparisons?

Bill: Let’s give you a couple of the really, really easier and important ones. Roy Williams is the “Secrets of Ads” marketing consultant, and if anybody really has to do radio advertising, go right away and go to check the “Secrets of Ads”, but here’s what he suggests as a way to create a USP. The first thing you do is you write down every reason a customer may have for buying from you, every reason. Next, because you want to be different from your competitors, you cross out everything on that list that’s true of your competitors. That’s how you get rid of what isn’t unique about your business because remember, your USP has to be your unique selling proposition.

Then, the few things that are left on your list are the core of your USP. They’re your differential advantage. They’re what makes you unique. They’re your competitive edge. They’re the reason customers come to you because all the other things are common in everybody else. They’re “me, too”, everybody else is doing them. You are not necessarily any better than anybody else. Why they come to you is because of why you’re different.

So, what you should do is now you have that list. Go through that list, prioritize the reasons as to what are the most important ones for your customers, and ask your customers. Don’t do it based on what you think. Ask them. You’ll be surprised, and then decide on the one or two benefits that become the core of your USP. Don’t focus on more than two. Research has shown that if you try to stack a USP with three, four, five benefits, it doesn’t work – just one or two. One is best, two at most, but when you get to three or four, it’s too much for people.

So, you can write down five, ten, twenty reasons for why you should be the only logical product or service supplier of choice for any prospect, and get rid of those benefits that aren’t unique, and make what’s left the basis of your USP. That’s the Roy Williams idea of competitive comparisons.

Michael: Let’s go to method number ten – preemptive marketing. It says, “Once you’ve got it, flaunt it. Use it everywhere.” Can you give a brief description of what preemptive marketing is and how can we integrate this as a method to develop a USP?

Bill: Well, preemptive marketing is something that was first invented by Claude Hopkins, and what a lot of people don’t know is Jay Abraham is a very, very, very famous marketing consultant, read the book by Claude Hopkins 80-90-100 times, and he’s Claude Hopkins incarnate. He’s always talking about preemptive marketing.

Basically, preemptive marketing is the following. Let’s say you have a business and you basically are the same as everybody else. There really is no difference between you and everybody else. How do you make your business stand out? Well, one way that Claude Hopkins found out is by telling the story behind your business. Being the first one in your business or your niche or your industry to promote a particular benefit that everybody else provides, but because everybody else provides it, nobody bothers to promote it.

So, if you’re the first one to tell that particular story, then you can grab market share. Claude Hopkins did this with Schlitz Beer years ago. He was trying to help Schlitz Beer increase their sales, and they gave him a tour of the plant, and they were showing him the steam cleaned bottles, the 5,000 foot deep artesian wells that they dug for clean water, and Claude Hopkins was amazed at all this. And, he said, “Why don’t you tell the people this?” And, they said, “Well, everybody does this.” He said, “Yeah, but, nobody knows this. You’re the only ones. If you tell people, they’ll all come to you.” So, Schlitz Beer basically started a campaign, and you can find this in a book that you and I worked on, “The Claude Hopkins Advertising Manual.” You went back and you found all the original Claude Hopkins ads that showed it, and it’s amazing, for Schlitz Beer and Van de Camp’s Pork and Beans, and many, many, many other advertisers where Claude Hopkins would go in and he would actually tell the story about how the product was made. And, because he did this for Schlitz Beer, even though everybody else produced beer in the same way, because Schlitz was the first, nobody dared to say, “Me, too. We also do that.” Because then they would look like they were a second rate beer company.

So, in preemptive marketing, that’s what you do. You be the first one in your niche to explain actually how everything’s done. Here’s a little secret you should tell your marketing consultants, Mike, that’s worth the value of listening to this interview right now. Two other ways you can do this with preemptive consulting – number one is you can change the name of a business so it has some type of preemptive marketing advantage. So, if we’re talking about drycleaners, you can say, “Speedy Drycleaners.” You can put “speedy” in there because that will subconsciously connect fast. Or, “Two for One Drycleaners” where all of a sudden, you’ve advertised something in your USP in the name of the company that nobody else is doing, even though somebody else in the city might be doing two for one.

Michael: That’s a great idea because the name of your business is already integrated all through your business anyway.

Bill: Right, so that’s number one for a method for preemptive marketing that most people don’t think about, and that’s very easy to do actually on websites now. A lot of people don’t want to take the time to change the name of the business that they’re running so they can do that with websites. So, you’ll have an entirely separate website for a company that’s actually you in terms of fulfillment.

The second thing is whenever somebody comes to you and says, “Well, you’re the same as everybody else. Why should I buy from you?” You say the following, “You get one more thing in this deal that you’re not going to get from somebody else. You’re going to get me. I will personally look after your account, your item. If you have any problems, you get me. That’s what you get with this deal that you don’t get with anybody else.”

Michael: I say that to a lot of my customers.

Bill: And, how does it work for you?

Michael: It works. I say, “What are you going to get with me? You get me, and my experience and my expertise and my return of your emails very quickly and phone calls.” I do it. I’ve done it to some of the consultants who are probably listening to this right now.

Bill: And, people want that one on one. They want that connection with somebody who they know is going to look out for their best interest, who’s going to hold their hand. That’s why I don’t care. I’ll tell you about USPs, because the job is to help people. The people want that connection, and you can’t buy it if its something that is just a service that they’re buying through the Internet or whatever. If you’re trying to sell personal services you say, “You also get me.” And, that’s sometimes that all that consultant needed to hear. Add that one sentence to your own marketing process, and you can help win the sale that way.

Michael: What is one of your favorite ways for my consultants to come up with and establish a powerful USP?

Bill: Well, let me give you two or three. It’s no problem. Let me go through number one. It is very simple. Sometimes you’re stumped so the Gary Halbert method is just basically list all the benefits you possibly can offer from a business on an index card, and you just keep shuffling them over and over and over again and sorting until the best benefits come to the top, and that becomes the basis of the USP.

Now, that’s what a lot of people do when they’re writing for instance copy for direct mail pieces, but the one that I like the most is Dan Kennedy who came up with this. If you can answer this question, you’ve got the beginning basis of your USP. You ready? Why should I do business with you above any and all other options available to me including doing or whatever I’m doing now? In other words, why should I choose your business, your products or service versus any and every other competitive option available to me? If you can answer that, you’re telling them why you’re different. You’re telling them a promise you’re making. You’re going to tell them how you’re going to go about it differently. You’re going to tell them about guarantees and all sorts of things. If you answer that question, you’ve got the basis of a USP.

So, what you do is just go to a client and you say, “Well, why should I choose your business versus any and every other available option?” So, when the customer answers that, you’ve got the basis of the USP. Then, that will lead and here’s another way to get the USP based on that answer you can answer that question. For instance, you go to a clothing store and you asked that question. They’ll say, “Well, you know, we’re giving you a 30 day money-back guarantee.” And you say, “Well, why is that important?” “Well, the other stores in the area don’t do that, and they don’t half the selection.”

So, what you can do is you can also going about getting the USP from answering the following question, “Do you know how”- and then you state the pain or problem your prospect has. “Do you know how when you buy clothes from a clothing store and you want to return, they only let you have a two week trying period? Well, what I do is” and then you just state the solution to your problem.

So, if you can bring up the biggest problem or frustration or pain that your customer or prospect has, and then you fill it in with, “Well what I do is” this explains how you’re different and how you solve the problem. That’s another way to get at the USP.

Michael: Okay, great. So, we’ve discussed how to do it. Now, I want to get back to the importance and your opinion when you’re developing USPs for clients, how important is the research phase? Do you also go directly to the customers to get the true feeling of the marketplace? How does research come into play with your efforts in creating the USP? Or does it?

Bill: Sometimes it’s necessary and sometimes it isn’t. Usually, if you just go through – for instance, there’s ten methods that I always use for creating a USP, but usually I only focus on three. A person who’s been running their own business for a while is different from somebody who’s just trying to start a business, and if you ask them why they come to them versus somebody else, and you ask these questions in the right way, they’ll tell you why. They know the answers.

So, you can usually come up with a USP in an hour believe it or not. Then, the problem is to refine it in a very good way, buff it up, and make it even juicier. Can we add a guarantee? How can we change the wording? How can we turn this into one sentence or two sentences versus 30? Do you know what I mean?

Michael: Yeah.

Bill: So, the first thing is just basically asking them. They usually know, but they never thought about it. Then, what you do is you take it and you refine it. You make it juicier. You make it more attractive. They usually know that.

Now, sometimes, the company owner hasn’t a clue why people are buying from him. What you do is, and you might have to just stand there and ask, “Well, why do you come here?” You ask the customers, “Why do you come here versus going to another store?” So, what you want to do is you want them to collect that information because you want them to have the epiphany, because you want them to realize how important this information is. You tell them the following, you say, “Look, what you really want is you want more of your best customers. So, try to find your best customers if you can. Give them a phone call or if they come into the store, or what have you, and ask them. Say, ‘Look, I really want to improve my business, and I want to know honestly why do you come to me versus somebody else.’” Because we’re trying to find out why your best customers come to you, and then what you’re going to try to do is use that information to design a USP to get more like them. If you just ask the general people in general, you’ll just get more general volume traffic and not necessarily more of the cream of the crop, the best customers that you really like.

Michael: Give me some examples. A couple that just really stick out in your mind about great, great, “knock ‘em dead” USPs. We’ve talked about Dominos, and we’ve talked about Federal Express. Any other ones that you really like.

Bill: Well, you know, actually some of the people that you’re talking about our marketing experts. So, let’s actually review some of the marketing expert USPs.

Michael: Yeah, let’s do it.

Bill: All right. Let’s take a look at Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy point out you should be able to recite this on a plane in 30 seconds or less. It’s sort of like a speech, and if somebody goes, “Huh, really?” Then, bingo, you’ve got them. That’s the basis of a USP. Dan Kennedy used to say and he’s changed over the years, “I device direct marketing strategies for all types and sizes of businesses that eliminate all the fat and waste from their advertising and increase the productivity of their salespeople by at least 1,000 percent guaranteed.” Now, if you sat next to him on a plane and you have a problem, aren’t you going to go, “How do you do that?” If you can get people to say, “How do you do that?” You’ve won.

Michael: I was doing telemarketing cold-calling as a training for the consultants, and I had a very quick one. I just said, “My name is Michael Senoff. I’m a marketing consultant here in San Diego. I’ve got two ideas that I think can increase your business 30-100 percent in the next 60 days without you having to spend a dime on advertising.”

Bill: Bingo.

Michael: And, it just worked like a charm.

Bill: And, that type of thing when you said, “Not having to spend a dime on advertising.” Really gets them.

Michael: That’s it because all these business owners are used to seeing is the newspaper company selling them more advertising – the magazines advertising, and they know they don’t know the results. That is the key thing “without spending more money on advertising.”

Bill: I like a USP by a marketing consultant called Glenn Osborne, and he’s sort of an NRP expert. He has a very simple one. He says, “What I do is double your sales and cut your work hours by 30 percent guaranteed. And, it only takes between 60 and 90 minutes on the phone.”

Michael: I like that. That’s great.

Bill: Yeah, who can resist that one?

Michael: Say it again.

Bill: He says, “What I do is double your sales and cut your work hours by 30 percent guaranteed, and it only takes between 60 and 90 minutes on the phone.”

Michael: That is great because we have an opportunity analysis. The whole idea is to get in front of that client and really get into their business and that would be a great USP for setting right up.

Bill: Yeah, and the neat thing is what he does is he gets most of his clients to read the book, “The 80/20 Principle”, and that’s the method that teaches them, “Hey, look focus on the 20 percent that gets 80 percent of your results. Stop focusing on the 80 percent that gets the 20 percent.” And, that cuts the work hours by 30 percent. A lot of people have never seen that.

So, for instance, taking that one principle, and you teach the marketing consultants and you go to a company and say, “Who are your accounts? And, who are your most active and inactive? Your biggest line?” or whatever. Then, they start focusing on the top 20 percent and the sales go up. Stop focusing on the bottom 80.

Michael: That’s right. Any other ones you can think of business related?

Bill: I like Alex Mandozian. Alex is a very big Internet marketing guy. He used to work in the advertising field, and he got out and said, “Gosh, what niche should I get into?” And, he said, “Well, how about postcard marketing?” And, I’m sure you’ve heard of him.

Michael: Sure.

Bill: And, now, he’s doing Internet stuff because he’s making lots of money, more than I suppose than marketing. I didn’t talk to him about it. But, here’s the USP for that one, “I consult my personal clients on how to make postcards their number one marketing method to build their businesses even during economic slumps, downswings, or full scale recessions.”

Michael: I like that.

Bill: Yeah, because what it’s doing is you go to him when you want postcard marketing, and then you realize, “Gosh, this guy’s going to help me. He’s probably an expert at it.” You usually go to postcard marketing because it’s cheaper during a period when the economics aren’t that good. He’s got all the avenues covered in his USP.

Do you see how there’s some psychology in it? So, this is why you’re promising them a big benefit, and you’re saying how you’re different from other people, but there’s psychology in it and there’s this credibility factor in it. People say, “Guaranteed”, or they have some honey, some attractiveness in it in terms of for instance you were talking about “low price” or cost or time wise. Glenn was saying between 60 and 90 minutes, or Alex is talking about the time period – economic slumps, down periods or full scale recessions. Whatever it is the sweet spot, the hot spot, you’re trying to target that – not everybody, not everything – just what’s going to be a really good sweet spot, and then conquer and capture that particular niche.

There’s all sorts of other USPs out there for products, too, or services like Enterprise the car company that says, “Pick Enterprise, we’ll pick you up.” And, that’s how they’re different from Hertz or Avis. They differentiated themselves by saying, “We’ll pick you up.” Avis said, “We’re number two. So, we tried harder.” It was incredibly logical for the credibility factor was in there. You’re thinking, “Yeah, try Avis. We’re number two. So, we work harder.” So, there’s the credibility factor actually was thing that upholded that particular USP.

Michael: All right, look, we’ve listened to a lot of ideas on how to do it. We’ve talked about characteristics of a powerful USP. Now, really, is this USP that big of a deal? Can it really make a dramatic difference in a business?

Bill: This is the number one most important thing before you do anything else with a marketing consultancy. You get them to sit down, and you figure out what in the world these guys stand for because if they can’t differentiate themselves, if they don’t have reason they’re different, then you can’t get the sales scripting, you can’t get the copywriting, you can’t go to the media, cross promoting, community marketing – because nobody knows why you’re different, why you.

So, the very first thing, and whether you hear it from me or Jay Abraham or Dan Kennedy, the very first thing you do is you have to say, “What’s your business stand for?” And, that’s the USP, and that’s the basis around all the marketing efforts. So, you’ve got to get that defined first.

Michael: How many businesses even know about this stuff? What do you think?

Bill: Very few. Most businesses, they just start operating and they never really give too much thought to it. A lot of times, the firms get bigger. They start thinking in terms of, “How do we compete with our competitors?” but, they don’t go through the process of, “Let’s really define it.” And, when you really define it going through the steps, going through the ten dimensions I’ve come up with or the ten different exercises that help you come up with the USP, if you go through that, you sometimes find some way to razor or laser focus it and then amplify it that really, really magnifies the results simply because you were just sloppy about telling customers what you stood for, and they might already know, but all of a sudden if you tell them in the way that’s most attractive to them, not only will your loyal customers become even more loyal, people who are on the sides start getting drawn to you like a magnet.

A lot of people just never think about. They just sell without thinking about what do they stand for. But, you really, really have to start thinking about psychology as well as the mathematics when you’re getting into the marketing arena, and coming up with a USP, what it is that appeals to them. That’s the psychological promise or benefit or hot button. How you say is a lot of behavioral psychology, too. Then, the rest is there’s all sorts of marketing weapons for how you reach them with it – cross promotions and sales, copywriting.

But, this is really the key – what’s your business stand for? What’s it’s purpose? In fact, if you ask some people, it’s another way to come up with your USP. Why did you start this business? A lot of people will give you the story, “Well, I started this business because I couldn’t find a hair dresser that would do purple hair. So, I wanted to do that.” So, then the USP becomes, “Any color hair you want, any time of day or night, 24 hours.” Do you see what I’m saying?

Michael: Yeah, that’s great. That’s not a bad idea.

Bill: You ask them, “What was your reason?” Now, that’s not the case for a lot of businesses because they just started because they started, but usually if they start this to fill a niche, it’s because they saw that there was a need and that need that they wanted to fill. If you can unearth it through that particular exercise or sentence, is the basis for the USP. Now, what you have to do is bring it to the forefront, amplify it and make it more attractive. Say it in a way that really strikes home, and a perfect example is people all the time in the mail they get direct mail pieces. Let’s say it’s for prostate medicine. I’m in my 40s, but I’m constantly because I’m on mailing lists getting prostate medicine, prostate formula in direct mail pieces. And, the headlines for each of them, I love studying them, are totally different, but they’re all geared to try to appeal to something that will really make me say, “Yeah, I want to try this.” Do you know what I mean?

Michael: Yeah.

Bill: So, even though there might be ten different companies trying to sell a prostate formula, the way it’s basically – and when you look at the ingredients, it’s really basically the same formula, but when you read the headlines or the big promise, how they word it is entirely different, and that’s what’s going to increase sales for one company versus another. They’re exactly the same products.

Michael: So, a lot of what we’re talking about goes right along with developing a headline for an advertisement.

Bill: Absolutely, and that’s why what I did is I went in and my particular method and I’m not trying to push it, but I go into a lot of copywriting secrets because you have to know this. It’s basically find out what the USP is and then say it in the most attractive way. A headline, for instance for an ad, is basically, “Well, what’s the USP for the ad? What’s going to get you to keep reading that ad? What’s going to get you sucked into the ad to get you read the first sentence, then the second, then the third and the forth?”

Michael: And, there’s another great way to find USPs, look at and model good advertisements, and usually if it’s a good advertisement, that headline could be perfect for generating USP ideas.

Bill: That’s what I do all the time. Another good idea is let’s say you have a USP of a product or a service for which many books are written. Go read Amazon.com reviews of a particular book, and you’re going to see certain phrases that people will come up with that are fantastic, killer phrases that you could use for crafting USPs. Or, you can use the craft copywriting pieces and marketing literature. It’s so important. All marketing is half mathematics and half customer psychology or behavioral psychology. It’s the same product, but you have to present it in a way that’s most attractive to people or reformulate. You bundle it. You make it bigger. You change the price, something that hits the sweet spot that really, really is what people want. It’s not a matter of me pushing the product. It’s giving the customers what they want, and finding that out that’s an art. You can find the basic information, but to mesh it and to put it into the right format whether it’s a USP or copywriting, title or headline or what have you, that takes the work. That’s where the work or the genius comes in.

Michael: Great. Bill, you’ve offered a lot of great advice, and you’ve brought me a lot more clarity on the subject as well. So, for people who are interested in getting this manual, where are they going to go and how do they get it? Tell me specifically.

Bill: Well, it’s really simple. They can go to www.USPNicheMarketing.com and www.USPNicheMarketing.com actually go through, actually teaches you how to write USPs. It gives some of the information we just went over. It’s right in there, right on the sales letter page, and if they’re interested, fine. It’s all there for him, but also you don’t have to buy my particular manual. I’ll tell you the two manuals people should pick-up if they really want to understand USP. The two books are Ries and Trout’s book on positioning. If you’re a marketing consultant, you have to pick that up. And, they produce a number of marketing works over the years like “Marketing Warfare.” Wonderful books, you can get them on www.Amazon.com They’re all about nine dollars, ten dollars.

Then, the other book that a lot of people don’t know about is sort of an underground classic, and this is for basically new products. It’s called, “Jumpstart your Business Brain” by Doug Hall, but this book, “Jumpstart Your Business Brain” not just the fact that new products or services, but actually the idea of creating a new product or service is the idea of unearthing a USP that people want, and then seeing if it will fly. So, you can get a lot of useful information out of that particular book. It’s probably one of the best top ten marketing books that have come out in the last 20 years.

Michael: I appreciate it. You’ve really helped these consultants out and helped me out. Thank you very much.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this interview on USPs. This has been exclusive training for you, the HMA consultant. If you have any questions, please give me a call at 858-274-7851.