The fairy-tale (warning: contains grains of truth)

Once up a time a business owner couldn’t tell people why they should by from him.

Every day a few people bought his wares. Yet more looked, and went away. Even though he spent lots and lots of time with them and offered discounts that made it hardly worthwhile to get out of bed in the morning.

One Day he read an old book by Rosser Reeves and realized what he was missing: a USP. He started listening to the customers who bought, and those that didn’t.

Because of that he narrowed his niche, advertised a great advantage of using his product that no-one else claimed for their own, and created a killer guarantee.

Because of that he became unique in his world.

Until finally he had to beat customers off with a stick (I made that bit up. Always be polite to customers and never beat them off with a stick). And such was the increase in profit he realized that working on his USP had truly been worth $10000 per hour.

Action.

Here’s a USP shortcut - think of a guarantee. The ultimate guarantee moves all the risk from the customer to you. And isn’t this fair -- you’re the expert, shouldn’t you take the risk? Aim to commit to a clear, concrete and coveted result, in a fixed time, or you’ll give the money back.

The back story

There’s more to a USP than a guarantee, but let’s stick with that for the moment.

A great guarantee should make you feel a bit sick. The more you offer, and the easier it is to claim, the more radical it is in your market, the more you’ll sell.

Inevitably you’ll get called out occasionally. Put aside money in the marketing budget for this.

A good, simple, power-to-the-customer example is: “if you don’t like it we’ll give you your money back.” This is not much of a guarantee when clothes shopping - what sale is final these days? But for a website designer?

It’s OK to add conditions if you need input from the customer - “If you complete our web design info form ...”. Or conditions to select the customers you want - “if your business’s revenue is over $500k per year ...”.

Feeling ill at the thought of giving a strong guarantee has three wonderful consequences. You’re taking risk from the customer; you’re going to be forced to measure the results to make sure you make money; and best of all, you’ll need to improve your service to deliver what you promise.

Taking risk from the customer simply means that you will sell more because you’re removing one of the most powerful sales blockers.

Now, I’m sure that you’ll worry that some people will take advantage of you. Don’t worry. One or two will. For sure.

To see if it’s worth it, you need measurements. It will go something like this. You’ll sell 10 more projects at 15k each. This gives you an extra $150k in revenue. Two of them want their money back, so you end up with $120k. You still had the costs for 10 projects - let’s say $75k. So the guarantee makes you an extra $45k pure profit.

But there’s more. First of all, you rarely do just one project for a customer. So the lifetime value of the eight new customers will be well over 120k.

Think about the two customers who wanted their money back. Let’s say one customer has a genuine reason to ask for a refund. It’s quite legitimate for you to ask for their help to understand why. This gives you a valuable opportunity to improve your service.

And the other customer? Say their objections are groundless. First, who cares, you made an extra 45k. Second, you just fired your worst nightmare customer, the one who complains even when you do a great job.

Want to be creative? Then combine a tripwire with a guarantee.

A tripwire is a low cost way to get people to spend something with you. They become a customer. Because as you know it’s easier to get a customer to spend more than to get a prospect to spend anything.

A tripwire could be a $100 site survey. Or do it for $10. I know many people give these away free. Two points: who values free and why not use this to select people who will spend money? The guarantee on this could be if the customer doesn’t appreciate the result for any reason then we give the money back. Worried you’ll be swamped? Then add a qualification: “Wanted: first 35 replies from business up to $1m revenue get $100 site report for just $10.”

Of course there are other ways to a USP. And like marketing, safety is in having more than one and updating them regularly. The original USP book was by Rosser Reeves and you can get a copy here (not an affiliate link).

Once you’ve earned $10000 per hour writing a killer USP, it’s time to get the message out. Until next time ... or {unsubscribe}.

Yours, Matt.