Getting customers: Your USP (See Ready, Fire, Aim)
In an earlier post, I wrote about the optimum selling strategy. Your OSS answers these 4 questions:
- Where are you going to find your customers?
- What product will you sell first to those customers?
- How much will you charge for it?
- How will you convince your customers to buy it?
Number 4 includes an idea called the Unique Selling Proposition (USP). When you know your USP, you have the key to what will make your advertising the most successful. The USP highlights one benefit about your product about all others. Sometimes, it’s not immediately obvious. For me, I chose saving people time, because most business owners are busy, and having accurate books is important, but doesn’t stir the spirit or inspire possibility. I could have talked about saving money, but good bookkeeping costs money too and so it creates resistance in the people who haven’t been convinced of its value yet. The more valuable a person sees their time, the more likely they are to respond to my messaging, and the people who don’t value their time will ignore me (thank God).
According to Michael Masterson of Ready, Fire, Aim – one of the top 5 business books I’ve read in my lifetime, there are 3 aspects to a solid USP:
- The appearance of uniqueness. The word choice is very specific. It needs to appear unique.
- Usefulness. “I do accounting for real estate landlords” is not useful unless I could somehow demonstrate that my serving that market benefits real estate landlords more than working with some other bookkeeper. Also, it is better to choose a benefit that is not original but you are able to make it seem unique rather than a truly unique feature that no one could give a flying frisbee about.
- Conceptual Simplicity. Steve Jobs was more magician than entrepreneur, especially when he described the iPod as ‘1000 songs in your pocket.’ So simple. Why do you think the dumbest videos go viral on Tiktok? Complicated things don’t typically spread.
When you think of ad concepts… Or when you’re choosing ad concepts marketers developed for you, filter your ads, your headlines, and your messaging through the 3 U’s of Useful, Unique, and Ultra Specific (simplicity). It will be much harder to get it wrong. There still will be some tweaking, and you might choose the wrong USP a couple times. But successful marketing is iterative. Add a 4th U for Urgent, and you’ll be unstoppable.
To have me as your bookkeeper, and save 80+ hours per year compared to doing it yourself, schedule a call with me. Imagine having two extra weeks of sales, or taking a vacation when you need it. It starts with how you carve out your time, and a good bookkeeper is the first cut.