To ensure you never have to compete on price, you’ve got to develop your company’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Your USP is the one thing that is truly different about you, or at least the one thing you can promote as being different.
A successful USP should be:
• Truly unique.
• Exciting to your target market.
• Something that will have your customers telling their friends about it.
• Something that can’t be easily copied.
A lot of business owners wonder why they need to find something unique at all. Shouldn’t there be room for dozens of “me-too” businesses? The fact is, there isn’t, and most “me-too” businesses will ultimately fail. This is especially electrical contractors – it’s all too common for owners to think “there isn’t anything unique about us, we are just another electrician”.
If you don’t have an existing USP, you’ll need to find one. Start by listing everything you do that could be considered even a little bit unique. These points don’t have to be ground breaking or earth shattering; they just need to be different enough to stand out.
To get you started, here’s a list of some possible USPs that might apply to contractors and you could adopt:
• You offer a better quality service, and you can specifically show how it benefits the customer in a meaningful way.
• You provide better customer service and you can easily explain and promote why you’re better.
• You offer a better or longer guarantee and you have it written down, you could even offer a workmanship certificate?
• You offer more choice/ selection/ options, and this is something people want and always look for. Maybe you can offer consultations where you bring suppliers catalogues to showcase all the options to a client?
• You serve a specific demographic group that is overlooked by most competitors. Maybe you can specialise in hospitals, or stadiums, or high end homes?
• You have the best after-sales service, and this is something you can explain to people easily when they buy. Maybe you could guarantee to come back to fix any problems within 24hrs?
• Your product or service has unique features people care about. Maybe you could have a guarantee to leave a premises where you’ve done work cleaner than when you found it?
• You offer attractive products or services no one else does.
• You have a “special ingredient.”
These are just a few examples of unique, saleable points. If you think hard enough about it, you’re sure to find something you are currently doing (or could be doing without much extra effort or cost) that is unique.
Basically, your uniqueness comes from one of seven areas: quality, price, service, delivery, speed, convenience, and experience. Regardless of what it is, you need to promote it at every available opportunity, and even better – convey it in a short and concise tag line, mission statement or capability statement.
