Welcome to the new home of Growth HQ.
If you’ve ever wondered:
You’re in the right place.
We all want to sell. If you don’t you’re in the wrong place.
You know the phrase “Knowledge is power”
Knowledge helps you sell more.
We’ve already talked about knowing your customer.
You also need to know your product or service that you are selling.
A simple way to align this thinking is to go back to the ancient philosophers and take another look at their ultimate wisdom: “Know thyself.”
This time let me angle it a little bit and declare this: “Know thy product.”
By the end of this article you will be able to determine the unique selling proposition (USP) of your product or service. More than that, you will be able to sell more with purpose and confidence.
This guy has a USP. It’s on his numberplate.
What is a USP and how can it Help Your Business?
What is your USP?
I don’t need to beat around the bush and give a long-winded definition of USP.
Simply said, USP is something that differentiates your product or service from all the millions of similar products and services out there.
It is very easy to be unique if you have a unique product or service from the very start. If you do not have that, you can either develop unique promotions or unique guarantees for your customers.
Aside from that, how can you make your product or service stand head-and-shoulders above other similar offers?
The lesson here is to find out what makes you unique.
This is where composing your USP comes in:
1. Write down your USP. Do not think it. Write it. Write down your USP in whatever way it comes out of your head. You may write down a thousand words, that’s ok. You can cut it down later and distill it to what is essential and unique about your business.
Make a point to be the devil’s advocate of your own business. Think about why your product or service is not worth anyone’s time. This will actually help you think about what will make it unique and what will make your buyers go gaga over it.
2. Be the customer and answer this question as you write: “Why should I buy from you?” According to Corbett Barr of Sparkline fame, if you can’t answer this question quickly, your potential customers will move on. It’s not a good thing. You haven’t even launched your product or service and you are losing already. So put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Be the distasteful critique. Be the killer editor. Be the discerning customer.
3. Let your personality shine in whatever product or service you have. Look at Gary Vaynerchuck as an example. He took his family’s wine business from a million dollar company to a multi-million dollar company because of his social media savvy and standout personality. His personality reflects in his books and in his businesses. People recognise his signature personality.
Your personality is your signature.
4. Look for patterns on the Internet and learn from them. What products and services attract you? What pages, copy or words make you stop and think?
Don’t be an ass kisser but nail your USP.
It is Easier to Understand When You Know
Once you know your USP you will have a better grasp of your product or service. Knowing your product or service will help you understand it better. The better you understand your offer the better you can explain what it is to other people.
Communicating your offer to potential customers is essential if you want to skyrocket sales. When you have a good grasp of your product or service it is very easy to be enthusiastic about it.
How many salespersons do you know that make a sale by being excited about what they are selling? On the other hand, how many half-hearted sales pitches have you read or heard that really moved you to buy?
Enthusiasm and knowledge will boost your potential customers’ confidence in your product or service.
Faith is very powerful. It is especially powerful when it comes to sales.
You may have heard about the placebo effect in medicine and healing. The conceit of the placebo effect is to have patients take inert forms of medication that they were made to believe would relieve symptoms of any specific disease or pains.
Not surprisingly, placebos tend to work on 30% of patients.
Why? Because of the power of suggestion. The mind believes that taking a certain medicine will heal. That faith alone is powerful enough to activate any form of healing factor in a body.
When selling products and services, we are not selling placebos. But if we are confident that our service can help other people and relieve whatever pain points we can address, then that confidence will reflect in our copy, our speech, and whatever external manifestations we share and communicate to our potential customers.
Knowing our own product or service and whatever pain points we can relieve will help us sell them by orders of magnitude better than any half-hearted attempts at marketing and promotion.
In summary, you get more sales by:
1. Knowing your product or service inside out.
2. Knowing your USP – it is not simple to write your USP but it is worth it.
3. Keeping your USP at the forefront of your mind so you can clearly communicate your product or service.
4. Communicating clearly – this will help you or your sales team boost enthusiasm about your product or service.
5. By going gaga over your own product or service – this will instill buyer confidence.
When you have a product or service that can actually address pain points of your customers, then all you need to do is differentiate yourself from the competition and reap the rewards.
You invested money, time and effort into creating what you thought was an irresistible offer. You mapped out a well-planned promotion. You started marketing it but the response was flat.
Well, you thought, I could reinvent and create a new strategy – so out went another investment of money, time and effort. Still, not many more bites. There are people who are interested and asking about your product. But, no one’s buying. You start asking yourself: where did I go wrong?
I am going to ask you a question.
Did you ever run your offer past your imaginary friends?
No, I am not crazy but I do talk to my imaginary friends. Well actually, they are my imaginary buyers and their names are Steve and Catherine.
What I am talking about are Growth HQ’s buyer personas.
Meet one of Growth HQ’s buyer personas – Steve
When marketing efforts fail to make a splash, it means that you have not checked in with your buyer persona. One fundamental concept that you must keep in mind, when developing new products and processes is an in-depth understanding of your buyer persona.
What is a Buyer Persona?
What do you say when asked who your ideal customer is? You may answer: a mother or a CEO of a multi-million dollar company or a teenager who is still getting an allowance from his parents. These descriptions are part of what makes up a persona but they are not enough. Buyer personas are so much more dynamic than this. They have to become real to you.
There are different perspectives about what a buyer persona is. It is an ever-evolving concept. There should be a continual shift and transformation in regards to your ideal customer, as your business progresses. You may have created a buyer persona at the initial stage of developing your company, but she or he will constantly change and
you need to be aware of that.
A buyer persona highlights the roles and responsibilities of your target audience. You need to now what these are so that you can communicate effectively and know what content will reach out and capture their interest.
Tony Zambito, an authority for buyer personas in B2B marketing, defines buyer personas as research-based archetypal (modelled) representations of who your buyers are, what they are trying to accomplish, what goals drive their behaviour, how they think, how they buy, and why they make buying decisions including where and when they
buy.
Adele Revella, a marketing expert and foremost evangelist of buyer personas, recommends looking at buyer persona in two perspectives. The first perspective is the “Core Buyer Persona”. This seeks to understand the buyer in his own environment – without reference to whatever you might want to sell him. It tells you whether the buyer is looking for solution like yours, or is busy with other priorities. The second perspective is the “Product Persona Connection”. It reveals attitudes about your product and company.
As you can see from these different perspectives, a buyer persona is more than just a demographic or profiling of a customer. A buyer persona is a vision of your ideal customer based on intensive qualitative research.
In order to identify your buyer persona you have to do in-depth research of your customers. You then answer the ‘whys’ because ultimately, this will point you to how they arrived at the decision making point for the first initial sale and why they came back for more.
How Important is a Buyer Persona for NZ Businesses?
Buyer personas play a central role in business sustainability and growth. We all know that customers are the lifeblood of our business.
In creating a buyer persona, you will form a strong insight into your buyers. This will provide a substantial difference when planning for effective marketing campaigns. You can then adapt strategies to suit seasons, purchase decisions and buying behaviours.
Your buyer persona will help you tremendously when aligning your content to the interests of your market. Effective content increases social shares, which amplifies your reach to new and potential markets.
Understanding your buyer persona addresses gaps in the decision making process. It allows you to understand the issues and concerns that can stop your buyers from going through with the transaction. It allows you to create a solution for these issues and concerns.
The Four Essential Questions
Who are your buyers?
What are their goals?
What are their problems or challenges?
Where do they source information?
Who are your buyers?
The buyer persona concept is a model based on actual customers. But it may not be who you initially think it is. It may be one type of person who is looking for a particular solution to a certain need, or several people with different needs.
What are their goals?
Depending on whether your business is B2C or B2B, there are varying goals. B2C persona goals are based on personal initiative. B2B are based on common ground arrived at by several decision-making bodies.
What are their problems or challenges?
There are many problems or challenges that buyers have to hurdle over before they arrive at a definite decision. We don’t exactly know how buyers think, we can only assume what these problems or challenges are and identify them by observing.
Where do they source information?
Buyers use multiple channels to source information and new ones are sprouting up all the time. Knowing where your buyers get information from is important, so that you know where to market your products or services. You will also gain an understanding of how they consume information and how to effectively engage them.
