JP Maroney: Welcome to everyone. This is call number two of the Business Growth Intensive weekly coaching and training group. This is modules three and four. Hopefully, you have a worksheet in front of you and are ready to take notes. If you do not have a worksheet, it's not the end of the world. We can get you a copy of that worksheet later. If you want to try to put a question, I'm not sure I'll be able to answer everything like if its technical stuff, right here on the middle of the call, but there is a way for you to ask questions there on the website. You can put that in and it pops up in a little window. It's kind of cool. So, anyway, if you want to send that through, you're welcome to do that as well if you're having some major issues. But if for some reason you have not picked up your worksheets already, no big deal. You'll have the opportunity to go back and get those. I did receive the transcripts from last week's training call, not the coaching call, but last week's training call, the one on Tuesday, just early this afternoon. We did not have time to get them uploaded to the server but that will be up.

And my transcriptionist who I have absolutely overloaded with work lately has assured me that she will be on schedule now to have each of the calls up well in advance of the next call. So you'll have the transcripts from modules one and two later tonight. You'll have the transcript for last week's coaching call. And if you missed that coaching call, shame, shame on you because you missed a grand opportunity to get some real one on one time with me. Those who attended have responded. I haven't heard from everyone, but I've heard response back from several.

They really appreciated the information we were able to give and some specific advice, unique to their situation. So I really want to challenge you to be on the next three coaching calls which take place on Thursdays. Then we will have the transcript for that. Then from now on, like for example today's call, the training call for modules three and four, we expect that transcript to be available by the end of this week and then the coaching call this coming Thursday we'll expect to have that transcript up for you first part of next week.

So we're going to get in the groove here on a schedule. We're excited about this. I've taught this material in live settings. This is the first time we've gone through it in a coaching teleseminar type setting and I'm real delighted with the results and the feedback we've been getting from everyone. So if you have your worksheets ready, let's get into the content for today. If you do not have your worksheets ready, grab a pen and some paper and let's rock and roll. We're going to cover two modules today, modules three and four.

Module three is called differentiate or die, how to find your unique value and eliminate the competition. And we're going to jump into this program because in this particular module, I'm going to show you how to separate yourself from the competition. How to put your business out in the forefront of the clients or prospects or customer's mind to where they see you as the best and only logical and reasonable source for whatever it is that you provide. Now as is with all of the training and coaching I do in relation to business growth, this training today is going to be fluid in some ways because you have to apply it to your particular situation, apply it to your particular business.

It's virtually impossible for me to say I'm going to give you five things completely guaranteed to work and it'll be a road map and every person on this call can follow those five things and that will lead you to guaranteed success in business. Instead, what I'll do is I'll teach you today some principles. I'll teach you some pitfalls and problems and challenges and mistakes that entrepreneurs make and how you can avoid them. And then I'm going to teach you some questions to ask. I believe it was maybe Tony Robins that said the quality of a person's life is determined by the quality of the questions that they're asking themselves. And that's sort of generalization of what he said.

But the truth is that asking questions and especially as it relates to your business is probably one of the most powerful things that you can do because if you keep asking the questions, you'll find the problems. You'll undercover the solutions, you'll find problems before they become problems. And I'm really, really excited about the content and the value of this training. So let's talk about an overview real quick. What you will learn. Well, an executive summary would be number one you're going to learn why you must differentiate your business.

Number two, you're going to learn the purpose and reasoning behind a USP. We'll talk about that definition of that in just a moment. You're going to find out a four-step formula for creating a USP. And I hope you're really leaning in and paying attention because a lot of marketers get this wrong. They totally screw it up. And number four, you're going to learn a hard hitting set of questions for defining your own USP in your business. And what's cool about these questions, it will help you drill down, drill down, drill down to get to the point where you can formulate your message, you're unique message to the market.

And what will this information do for you? Well, it'll help you gain a clear understanding of how you're business is unique. It'll help you position your business or your personal, professional, whatever it is that you do in the marketplace as the best provider for your particular product or service. It'll help you eliminate the competition from the minds of the prospects so that when they're looking for some particular solution that you provide, they don't even think or other people. They go; I have to get a hold of those people.

And then it'll help you hone that unique marketing message. We'll talk about the different ways of using that marketing message and we'll carry some of this over into part two of today which is modular four and discussing your tactical tune up. So let's jump in, take your handout, turn to page two and let's talk about the power of you. And I'm not talking about y-o-u, even though you do have incredible power. I'm talking about the power of the letter U meaning uniqueness. In your business, what is unique?

I put in your handout that define and differentiate how your business is unique or get lost in the sea of competitors and become an also ran enterprise. It's up to you but you must make a proactive choice and do something about it now. Here's what I find. I find that far too few entrepreneurs ever put in the energy time and sweat into defining what's truly unique about their business and learning how to communicate that to the marketplace. And instead their really sort of coasting on maybe some other aspects that make their business successful.

For example, some people will come out with an innovative product or service and they kind of learn to coast. Then when they get competitors in the marketplace, they get killed because they have not really defined what's unique about them as it relates to everyone else in the market. I also find that some people and I've been guilty of this in the past, coast on reputation or coast on a particular positioning that they had previously or contacts that they have previously. And when it comes to getting out into a real hard-core, hand to hand combat kind of situation in the market, they lose out because they've really not honed that unique differentiation and uniqueness in the marketplace and why people should choose them over all other competitors.

When you think about a USP and we're going to get into defining issues of actual definition or what that means. But when you think about a USP or your uniqueness, it really gives you an opportunity to sort of elevate yourself, put yourself on a plateau above and head and shoulders over all other competitors. And it's sort of like if you were looking for your child in a sea of other children and you couldn't find your child even though you really liked your child and you really wanted to find your child and you loved them, you care about them. But you had this big mass of people out on a football field milling around and you're trying to locate your child.

You would have a lot of difficulty even though you really in your heart wanted to locate them. But imagine if someone gave them a step stool maybe only a foot or two foot tall and you could step, they could step up on that foot stool so all of the sudden, their head pokes up out above every other child on that football field. All the sudden you could quickly and clearly identify them as the one you want. and when you think about USP or uniqueness in the marketplace, what you want to happen is in this massive sea of competition where if you're a speaker there are literally tens of thousands of other speakers, if you're an attorney and there are literally hundreds or thousands of attorneys in your market, if you are a coach or a consultant and there are literally thousands of coaches and consults, you're a locksmith and there are literally dozens or hundreds of other locksmith options.

No matter what it is that you do automotive center, a pharmacy, whatever it is, if you're competing in the marketplace and you have not clearly identified to your prospective clients and customers why you're unique, then you're going to get lost in the shuffle. And what the USP sort of gives you as a ladder or a step stool to climb up above everyone else and say hey; here's why we should do business and you sort of rise above all the noise. So it's going to be exciting to go through this process and talk about why you should differentiate or perhaps more important what happens when you don't. You can make a few notes in your handout if you'd like.

When you don't differentiate, you're forced to compete on price alone. When you don't differentiate, you're forced to market in the same space and spend more dollars to get customers and clients than other people; or then you should be spending to get customers and clients. When you don't differentiate, you're forced to justify your services to customers and clients in a defensive mode versus an offensive mode. Now let's take a look at that just for a second and say when you go to market and you've seen people, Wal-Mart is one of the few that pulled it off on price. But I'm going to give you a little secret about Wal-Mart that you may or may not have thought about consciously.

But when you're forced to compete on price, what happens is your margins begin to dwindle and eventually your business can't afford to operate and it can't afford to provide the level of service and the level of attention to customers and clients that perhaps you're accustom to delivering and that they're accustomed to receiving. And so it forces you, let's say that you're in competition with three or four other people and if the only differentiation between those three or four people is how much you charge for your services, and then guess what? The one with the lowest price wins, and then the next one with the lowest price, and the next one with the lower price, and then you have the equivalent of a gas war; you know those types of situations. So last thing you want to do and we've gone into organizations before that have been somewhat commoditized and found ways to create that uniqueness or that differentiation so that they no longer had to compete on price. My preference would be that you never ever, ever compete on price, no matter what you offer because if you get stuck in that loop, you will find yourself reducing your prices over and over and over again in order to survive. And there are much better ways to compete in the marketplace.

It also forces you as I said to justify your product or service based on a defensive position rather than an offensive position. See I would rather go out into the marketplace and proactively and preemptively proclaim what we're all about and tell people what we're capable of accomplishing and doing in our marketing and why we're unique and different and why they should do business with us then for us to have to go up against someone say in a bidding or a proposal type situation where we have to justify our existence in a defensive mode, saying, well yes we do that too. Yes, we do that too. Yes, we do that too. Yes, I know but we do that too. That's the last thing I want to have to do.

So we're going to help you avoid that. I want to give you a little bit of background on USP and tell you what it really means. Number one, USP stands for unique selling proposition. I have heard and I'm going to guess you have too said many other ways. I've heard unique selling position, unique selling point, and unique selling promotion. I've heard all sorts of things. And very few marketers really know the background and the history and why the entire USP was created and by the way it started out as a theory. Not only do they not know the background behind it, but very few of them know how to truly create a USP.

What a lot of people think are USPs are really just clever slogans. And that is not what we're talking about. So I want to be real clear on that today. So let's talk about where the USP came from. This was originally developed by a guy named Rosser Reeves in his book Reality in Advertising. Rosser Reeves who was also by the way the chairman of the board at Ted Bates and Company, it was an advertising organization. He gives the precise definition as it was understood in his company. This was from many, many, many, many years ago. I was looking for the date of when this book was published.

I'll have to pull that out and take a look at the original copy write. But it's been a long time. If you look for one of these books on the market, they're quite expensive. It's out of print. But let me give you the clear definition. There are three key components or ingredients to a USP or a unique selling proposition. And I want you to listen closely and then we'll go back and examine what each of them mean.

Number one, each advertisement must make a proposition to the customer. Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit, one more time. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the customer quote, buy this product and you will get this specific benefit, end quote. Number two, the proposition itself must be unique, something that competitors do not or will not offer or one more time. The proposition itself must be unique, something that competitors do not or will not offer. There's a key distinction there. I want to come back and talk about it in just a few minutes.

Number three; this is the third component of a real, true USP. Number three, the proposition must be strong enough to pull new customers to the product. Now this is really, really powerful. So let's go into this and let me sort of dissect all three of these key points for you. Number one, each advertisement must make a proposition to the customer, buy this product and you will get this benefit. Now, I want you to take a look at every single piece of advertising, marketing, promotion, etcetera that you personally conduct for your business that you have put out into the marketplace.

I want you to ask yourself does every single one of these pieces of marketing, every single one of these pieces of marketing make a proposition to our customer of buy my product, and my service, etcetera and you will get this specific benefit. So does it make a proposition to the customer? An example of this would be, and I don't want to get into giving too many examples early in the early part of this, but I'm going to give you a great example and we'll come back and talk about these people in just a few minutes and that's Enterprise Rent A Car, now the number one rental car company in the world.

But theirs is what? Pick Enterprise and we'll pick you up. And you might say well, big deal. But then you have to go and read the other two components of this USP. Number two the proposition itself must be unique, something that competitors do not or will no offer. Now let's think about this for just a second. It can't just say, if you come and buy from me, you're going to get a specific benefit. That benefit must then be so unique and different that no one else on the marketplace is offering it or is talking about it. See it says do not or will not offer.

Here's the thing about that. If you have something unique in the way you do business or the way your product delivers its solution, its end game result, and you can promote that to the marketplace and no one else offers that, then you have clearly an opportunity for a USP provided it meets part number three in just a moment which we'll talk about. But there are businesses, and I want to go ahead and throw this into the center of the ring because there are certain businesses who go well, you know what? Basically, I do the same thing my competitors do and they all do the same thing each other does and we all basically offer the same products or services that each other offers.

So I'm having a difficult time coming up with my USP or my uniqueness. And that is entirely possible that you could find yourself sitting in that boat. I have a number of industries I've worked with that have that challenge. One is banking because think about it. A lot of banks offer basically the same type of stuff. And the other is the HVAC contracting industry, commercial and residential heating, and air conditioning contractors. Basically they have vans and deliver service, put air conditioners in and service them, put Freon or whatever the latest juice is for them and that's essentially the same type of thing.

So they struggle sometimes to find their USP. And I'm going to bet that there are people listening to this either on the call or on the recording who you have struggled to come up with a USP even though maybe you started thinking about creating one for your business simply because you felt like well everyone basically offers the same thing I do. So I'm going to give you an out on this. And that is that it says the proposition itself must be unique, something that competitors do not or will not offer.

It could be that your competitors offer something but they are not talking about it and you're not talking about it. And you're the first one to come out and say we do this and therefore you get a chance to sort of take ownership of that. and everyone else, just by assumption, just by assumption say well if they do this, then they must be the only ones who do this, just because you come out and say it first. You own it. It's a preemptive move. And it's a way to sort of carve out a niche in the market where you couldn't find one before, based on something that maybe you and all of your competitors do but the fact that you're the only one who's talking about it.

I’m going to give you a very, very real example. There was a beer company, many, many years ago and there was an advertising executive who had taken on their account and was looking for the uniqueness, the hook, the powerful little piece that would make the marketing all work better. In essence he was looking for their USP or their uniqueness. And so he had asked tons of questions about how the beer was different and how it was made and basically beer was beer. All beer companies did essentially the same thing, which is why they were having such a challenge with differentiation.

And so one day he was touring the plant, and I may get this story a little bit wrong, but I'll get this for you in print at some point. But he was touring the plant and he walked past this room and there was this like a glassed over room and he noticed that they were, it was almost like a lab in there. And they were sterilizing these bottles with steam and they were processing stuff and cleaning it and doing all these different things. So he asked someone, he said what are they doing in there? They explained the process to him and they talked about how many times they cleansed it and what efforts and great lengths they went to insure that the bottles were pure and clean and were uncontaminated and that the beer that they manufactured and processed was the purest beer ever and that it had no imperfections to it, it had no bacteria, it had no chances of illnesses or causing harm and all of these different components of making sure that they were pure and clean. And the processes were in place in the manufacturing of their beer. And he said that's fantastic, that's fabulous.

We should talk about that in the advertising. And someone said, yes, but all beer companies do that too. And he said, yes but no one else is talking about it. And so he took that and made that into an entire campaign and an entire positioning for their advertising and they captured huge shares of the market based on the concept that they did all of these different things to ensure that their beer and their bottling was more pure than anyone else's.

And that's a great example of taking something that other people are doing that you're doing and using it to your advantage. You know do you offer 24 hour on-call service with no additional charge, no up-charge, and no sur charge? I've asked people this before. They say, yes we do but everyone else offers that. I say, yes but is everyone marketing that? Are they talking about it in their advertising and marketing? Well, no not really. Well, that's a uniqueness. That's something we might be able to sort of hang out hat on in terms of USP.

So when you look at the USP, then it must have that third component, the proposition must be strong enough to pull new customers to the product and here is where even people who think they understand what a USP is fail. Because most people think, come up with something clever, unique and different that no one else is doing or talking about and the marketing will flock to you. And that's simply not true. The third component must be in place, the proposition must be strong enough to pull new customers to that product. What that means is it has to be important enough to your customers, clients, prospects that they would get up and take action on that uniqueness.

Unless and until all three of those components are satisfied, you truly don't have a USP. You may have a unique statement. You may have a clever slogan. You may have a great idea. You may even have a wonderful marketing message. But it's not unique. And it's not strong enough and powerful enough to move people to action. And that's the key. Now, I want to give a little warning here because Rosser Reeves warned against forming a USP based on what he called the deceptive differential, a uniqueness that is too small or too technical for customers to observe the differences in actual practice.

In other words, it's got to become big enough and powerful enough and it's got to become important enough and descriptive enough that it makes sense or makes a difference for people. I want to give you a few examples of the USPs so that you can start to think about what's unique and different about your business. Here's some great examples of USPs with a clear message. One, Head & Shoulders, you get rid of dandruff. Olay, like Oil of Olay, you get a younger looking skin. Red Bull, you get stimulation of body and mind. Some of the people who were the early pioneers of the USP, one was Domino's Pizza. I say early pioneers. These are people that we would remember.

Domino's Pizza, you get fresh, hot pizza delivered to your door in 30 minutes or less or it's free. Fed Ex, you're package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight. One of my favorite stories from Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts, what is it, Richard Geer and Julia Roberts, finally gets her in the church to get married and she has cold feet again, runs out the front of the church, bolts down the steps and jumps on the back of a what? And I ask my audiences and they always say a Fed Ex truck. I say yes. My favorite lines in the entire movie, the entire movie, band my favorite lines are two guys standing on the front porch of the church. One says to the other, says where do you think she's going? The other guy says, I don't know but she'll be there by 10 in the morning.

And I love that. Why do we know that? Because that's Fed Ex's US; they created that entire industry with their USP. Your package absolutely, positively has to get there overnight. That was Fed Ex. It was created out of thin air. M & M's, the milk chocolate melts in your mouth not in your hand. Wonder Bread, it helps build strong bones twelve ways. These are all USPs or uniqueness that separated them from their competitors. And you think about great, great, great products in our, you can walk through the grocery store and through Wal-Mart and you look at great products that stand out in your mind and you think about how did they get a foot hold?

How did they establish themselves in the early days? What was it that made them so unique or different? I remember whenever I first went on the speaking circuit back after I sold my magazines in 1999 and I met a guy, we got to talking about what sort of positioning I should have in the marketplace as a speaker. And he described some areas to me that I felt like were good opportunities, that if I could position myself correctly in those markets and in that particular topic then I could do very, very well. And I did. For many years, I spoke on the circuit based on this one premise. When I would talk to people, they would say well what do you do?

What do you speak on? Because I mean here I was clearly up against all other speakers in the marketplace. And I would say I help entrepreneurs get their employees to think and act like owners in the workplace and take personal responsibility. And see, I didn't say I'm a leadership speaker. I didn't say I'm a management speaker. I didn't say any of that kind of stuff. I had very clear promise that I made that was unique and different. Because people would go, man if you could help us do that, we'd be tickled to death or I'd have people incredulously say, yeah right.

Who can do that? I say well we have a formula. We have a system we teach for getting employees to think and act like owners in the workplace. We sold a tremendous amount of product that way and I sold a lot of speeches that way. So it works no matter what you're doing. You can be a multi-national company. You can be a Fortune 500 company. You can be a niche company in a specific area or industry. You can be located in one region or one city or one town or one neighborhood. It really doesn’t matter.

The opportunity for you is if you can differentiate yourself and separate yourself from the competition then you truly, truly can compete more effectively. So let's talk about, let's go to page three and talk about the formula. What I call the USP formula. By the way, ultimately, if you stick around, stay on my list very long, you're going to see me come out with a product called the USP Formula or at least a book because to me this is one of the most important things that companies must get right. You have to get it right early on. So we're going to talk about this four-part competition crushing USP Formula.

I believe that unless your USP is important to the customer or client, it is worthless. It must connect to them on an emotional or practical level. So we're going to talk about how to drill down to that and define what it is that you're product or service does, how it benefits people and how it connects with them. You'll see me use the words throughout this formula, the words features and benefits. So I'd like to define early on what features are versus what benefits are. Features are the physical attributes or components of your product or service.

In other words, how it's made up, what it is, etcetera, what it does. The benefits are the results or what it does for the end user. And it directly relates to the features. In other words, the features create the benefits or they should create benefits. The physical attributes of your product, the descriptive attributes of your product should have some sort of outcome and in many cases there's more than one benefit. But it should create benefits for your clients or prospects. So again the features are those attributes, those descriptive words that describe how your product or service works or what it looks like or what it's made of.

And the benefits are the results, what your prospect gains as a result of using your product or service or doing business with your company. Now step number one in the USP formula is to list all of the features of your company, your product, your service, your profession, what you do, who you are, etcetera. That should take you some where between a few hours and a few days. Depending on how much time you set aside and work on it. This is not a quick fix, sit down, ten minutes, you're done. When you really begin to dig into your company, your product, service, who you are, the people that work for you, you will come up with a monster list.

I had a thing I used to teach from the stage, I still use it sort of get people's brains clicking and I'll teach it to you here today if you'd like to help get things rocking along. And it's called the 10-10-10 formula. I think it's somewhat limiting because it doesn't take you completely and fully where you need to go. But it's a great way to get started. So if you're having trouble coming up with the features of your product or service, your company, your personnel, your people, etcetera, your processes, then I would suggest you start with the 10-10-10 formula. 10-10-10 formula is this. What are ten ways that your customers benefit by buying your product or service? What are ten ways that they benefit by doing business with your company? What are ten ways that they benefit by working with you and/or your employees personally, the people in the company?

And what happens is that by quantifying it and saying, okay you have to come up with at least ten, it gets people started. It gets the juices flowing. So when you think about what are the ten benefits or ways the customer benefits by buying your product or service, what happens is most people end up writing features down anyway, first. And they have to be converted to benefits. So let's talk about that. What are some of the features of your product or service? It could be that it's made out of alloy metal. A feature of your product could be like let's say for example; it's a warranty that you have.

Well, the fact of a warranty could be a feature. We offer a 30-day, 30,000 mile or 3,000 mile warranty or whatever. That could be something that you offer with the sale of your product if you're in the automotive area. So think about all of those different things that are features. It could be what it's made out of. It's made out of leather. It could be how it's made. You know, our stuff is made overseas. It could be little things like it takes four weeks for us to get more product in. That's a feature that in theory you could turn into either a positive or negative benefit. It could be a negative benefit.

We'll talk about that in a minute but what are the features of your product or service? What are the features of your company? And when we talk about that that means like we offer a toll free support line. We offer phones answered 24 hours a day by a technician. We offer 16 different ways to pay. We accept six different credit cards and three credit type accounts you can set up. We'll take your check; we'll do an electronic check. We take cash; we'll break it up into payments, whatever. So you know you think about all the different ways to pay. Those could be features of your company and what it is. So you start listing those. Where you're located, are you conveniently located just off of the main road in your town? Do you have an easy to remember web address? Do you utilize various technologies to deliver your messages? Do you offer free training and workshops to teach people how to use your product? Those again are all features of your company that make up what you are. Now when you think, and how many years that you've been in business could be a feature of your company. Features of your personnel or you as an individual if you work in your business could be things like how many years of training you have, how many years of experience you have.

Could be all of the different types of industries you've worked with. It could be the accomplishments you've made, the certifications that you've achieved. It could be your personality. Last week on one of the calls, Kristin mentioned Paul's empathy. And that could be a feature Kristin that could be strategically integrated when you start working with tactics that we'll talk about later today. So again you look at the people that work in the organization and you say are there, what are all the features then? What are the training, the personality, the expertise, the experience? What are all the different things that our people have? And by the time you finish those three lists, your mind should be set off in a million different ways. You'll be recording and writing down tons and tons and tons of features.

Then step number two is to list all the practical benefits for each feature. So you take one of those features and you say, well what does this do for our clients? What does this mean to them? How does this help them? What result do they get as a result of this particular feature? Say that it's a warranty, like say a 30 day guarantee. Let's talk about risk reversals for a second. Well if you have a thirty day guarantee then that means that your clients, the benefit to them is they get to try it without any risk whatsoever. That's pretty powerful.

So that's, the feature is that we offer 30-day guarantee. The benefit is that you get to try it without any risk. I know some people who offer free trials, like a 30-day free trial. When we sold a lot of our training videos on continuity, meaning month to month subscription, we would offer them risk free for 30-days. You send in the little card or you sign up on the website and we will send you the first module, you have 30-days you can review it, use it, train your employees, conduct meetings, get feedback, create change, get improvements, go ahead and make money off the ideas you create out of those meetings. And if at the end of 30 days you decide that this program is not right for you, return it and owe nothing or simply keep it and you'll receive another each month for the low subscription rate of whatever rate that was that they were receiving it at. So we had that and did very, very well with that. That was a feature. Some people would classify that 30-day free trial, risk free trial as a benefit. But it wasn't. It was a feature. And what it did as a benefit is it helped clients be able to get all the advantages of the product without risking a dime whatsoever. It allowed them to try it before they buy it.

So you could go through and list all the different practical benefits of each feature. And I'm going to want you to do that. I'm going to give you a little bit of a cool way to do this in just a few minutes. Step number three; define the emotional benefits linked to the practical benefits. Here's where it gets fun. I would say nine out of ten, maybe more marketers miss this. So you're going to learn something here today and if you get a hold of this, this is absolutely life-changing, revolutionizing. Your life will never, ever be the same. Your business will never, ever be the same again if you get this.

Step number three. Define emotional benefits linked to the practical benefits. What does that mean? It means that people buy on emotion, not on logic. In other words, people go out and they buy that new car because it makes them feel sexy, because it makes them feel like a stud. It makes them be able to drive up in front of their friends at the country club with the top down and their hair blown back and their Ray-Bans on and everybody look at them and their Versace's [sp?] and everybody look at them and go, whoa, doesn't he look good? Or doesn't she look good?

That's the emotional reason that they buy the particular car. Now they go back and justify it with logic, with practical reasons like well, this is a safe vehicle. It's rated the highest rating of safety on the road or it has all of these amazing air bags and features or this thing, my word this things gets wonderful gas mileage. And I'll save all this money on gas mileage when, in fact, they bought it to look sexy. That's the truth. Now they don't admit that to anyone. But you have to go back.

And by the way, sex appeal, although one of the strongest, it's not the only emotional buying motive or trigger. You have to go back and look at what are all the reasons why people buy your particular product or service. What is it emotionally that they're looking for? What emotional pay-off are they looking for? If you sell for example some sort of training on how to start your own business and succeed in 21 days or less, okay, wouldn't that be a great promise? That'd be a pretty cool USP but how to start your own business and succeed in 21 days or less.

The emotional pay-off that you could be, and I'm not saying this would be one of them, but you could be giving is the emotional pay-off could be you get to basically tell your boss to shove it. You get to feel the power of working for yourself, the freedom of controlling your destiny. See those are all emotional things. If you're thinking like emotional triggers like greed is a great one. You get to buy whatever you want, whenever you want without answering to anyone whatsoever because you'll have so much money coming in on a consistent basis in your own business after you get that 21-day start. I'm making all this up but that could be an emotional buying trigger that causes people to want to buy.

So you take all of those features, you convert them into benefits and then you convert them into emotional benefits. For example, going back to that risk reversal where we said well someone could try something risk free for 30 days and we have a 30-day guarantee or a 30-day trial period. That's the feature. The benefit, practical benefit of that is that you get to try it before you buy it. You get to try it without risking any money. The emotional benefit could be you get to have complete piece of mind because you know your boss isn't going to crawl your tail because you bought something that's just going to sit on the shelf again. It wasn't something that was useful in the company.

It could be, if it’s a warranty that you get the peace of mind of being able to go to sleep at night knowing that that particular product is guaranteed to work or your money back. See, those are all emotional connectors. And when you think about what are the reasons people buy for emotion? We buy for greed. They buy for sex appeal. They buy for admiration of others; all of the different, for love, for relationship. What are the reasons that people buy? It goes back to emotional reasons, not practical reasons.

So can you take your product and do that? Can you take your company and do that? Can you take your people and your expertise that you have or anybody that works with or for you has, convert them into…write all the features, convert them into practical benefits and then define the emotional benefits that are linked to those practical benefits. Now, step number four in this whole USP formula. And you go JP; this is a lot of work. And I say yes it is a lot of work, but it’s a lot of worthwhile work.

So you take, step number four, prioritize your list of benefits in order of customer value. In other words, which of these benefits do you think they would value the most? And there are only a handful of ways to know that. one, if you've been in your business for very long, then you've probably heard a lot that will help you decide which ones are most important to people meaning you've heard them complain about the same things over again, you've heard them share and vent their frustrations about particular suppliers or vendors that they've dealt with in the past.

They're most likely sharing with you on some level their frustrations, challenges, etcetera. And then you take your particular benefits, the deliverables of your products, service, company, etcetera and you take and apply them to those particular problems and frustrations that people have shared and expressed with you and you order them in order of priority. What you're going to find is the things that are surfacing, the top three, five, items that are on that list, you have a real good chance of converting those into your USP. You'll see if surface. Because what's going to happen, remember back to our definition of the USP.

It had to be a proposition of the customer that said buy this product and get this specific benefit. It had to be something that the competitors did not or would not offer and it had to be something that was strong enough to pull new customers to the product. That missing link that so many people have is that even though they come up with something unique, they have not connected it to make sure that it really is something that's strong enough and important enough to draw customers in. And that's really the key.

So let's look at that formula again. Step number one, list all the features; step number two, list all practical benefits for each features of your product, service, company, etcetera; number three, define the emotional benefits linked to the practical benefits; and number four prioritize your list of benefits in order of customer value. Now what you're going to have to do, since this is a group training and coaching session. You're going to have to work through this process. And hopefully you'll be wise enough to set aside some time this Thursday to be on the private Q & A call.

And you're welcome to pitch some ideas. Say, JP here's what I was thinking about. What are your thoughts? And that'll give me a chance to work through that. Or you can email me some ideas and on the Q & A call I'll try to address them. Or alternatively, if you have free consult time coming to you with your BGI Training, then you're welcome to…we can work on USP a little bit in our one on one's together. And alternatively after that and I know some of you are already private clients, but if you're not and you want to do some private work on this, we can do that too.

So either way, this is important enough and vital enough to get right and to get it right now. You need to start working on your uniqueness, your differentiation, your USP. So let's talk about how to take action on this and how to create your own USP based on what you've learned. I will warn you that it does take work and it takes time. But if you'll take the time to do the work, you'll be rewarded in this particular effort because what you're about to do will set you apart from all competitors and give you an unfair advantage in the marketplace. So I'm going to give you some questions over the next day or two that you can ask yourself that will help you begin to hone down which of those benefit statements you wrote down on the previous page or as a result of the previous page.

Which of those benefit statements are most likely to surface as a USP? Here's some question. Number one, what problems, frustrations or challenges do I regularly hear from my customers and clients, things that my product or service fixes, solves or addresses? So start writing all those frustrations and challenges and problems and everything down, which of these problems, frustrations or challenges do I hear the most? Prioritize, okay? Which of these problems, frustrations or challenges are most important to my customers or clients? And you're going to have a sense of that by the way they've expressed it to you.

How does my product or service fix, solve or address those issues? In other words, you're talking about its delivery, its capability of fixing it. In other words, you want to write a USP but you don't want to write a USP that you can't keep the promise that you can't keep up with. Do we do it in a unique way that none of our competitors do it? In other words, do you sell it? Do you deliver it? Do you support it? Do you train about it? Do you teach about it? Are you more qualified in some way to have created it than what competitors are? Or can you get out there and say something before anyone else does and capture the market and be preemptive by being the first one to say it?

Those are two different things but they can both be utilized in developing your USP. Do we do it in a unique way that none of our competitors are talking about? In other words, could we be the first to tell the story? What are our top three to five perspective USPs? So once you're starting to hone this, asking all these questions, working through this list, you should start having some of these things surface. And you should start saying, you know what? We stand for this. This is what we do. We want to go to the market and make a proposition that if you buy my product or service you get this result. What is that result that you're going to offer to them?

Which do we think best defines how we best serve our clients or customers in a unique way? And how can we articulate this uniqueness, this USP in a way that's from the client or prospects perspective and in a way that's important to them. In other words, can we say it so it's not self serving and not patting ourselves on the back, but rather can we say it in a way that delivers to them a big promise and a big solution to the challenges and frustrations that they face? In other words, can we walk and talk their language? Not ours, but theirs.

If you get that right, you've got yourself a great shot at developing a USP. So I suggest that you take, you know if we didn't have to cover all the content for the next section, we could stop here and you'd have a week's worth of work. So I suggest that you truly, truly take the time when we get off the call today or set aside some time tonight or tomorrow morning to work through this. Start a list, reach in your drawer of your desk, pull out a yellow notepad and carry it with you for the next three to four to five days and start writing down all the features, writing the features, writing the features, writing the features, even if you don't worry about converting them to benefits later.

You can do that. Then once you have the practical benefits, you can convert those into the emotional benefits, the payoff that people get emotionally from enjoying that particular benefit. And then ultimately you can take and prioritize those and start identifying which of those would be your ideal USP? Now what I'd like to do here is take about a two minute break, let you grab something to drink, shake the wrinkles out of your rump, whatever you got to do. I will open the lines for just a couple of minutes while we're on this break. I'm going to pour myself a cup of coffee and then we'll get started here in just a couple of minutes.

I'll open the lines. If anyone has a specific, specific question I can answer in a short period of time, I'd be happy to try to do that. So give me let's see here, just a second, unmute all guests.

I hear noise, so that means there are some people out there. If you've got a specific question, I'd be glad to try to answer real quick while we're in the break mode and other people are milling around.

Paul: JP, Paul Sterling here.

JP Maroney: Yes, hey Paul.

Paul: How do you sort of test it? I mean I thought that I've had good ones in my head but is there a way of testing them like on Google or some way to know if you've got three or four that you're running through your mind. How do you start getting some feedback to know whether you're even on the right track?

JP Maroney: Paul, I think that's a fantastic question. I appreciate you asking it. And I really didn't cover it I guess. I would suggest, and this is something we've had people do. One is I would start using it in conversation. When you're talking to people, think about how often people ask you what you do, all right. I would start using that USP in that conversation and testing it on people. I would also, if you have a half a dozen or a dozen or so people that you trust, I would pick up the phone…you know again you've got to realize if they're not your market, it may not resonate with them.

So you have to be a little bit careful about this. But if you had some people you trusted, I would pick up the phone and call them and I'd have maybe my top three or five choices, probably three choices ready. And I'd pick up the phone and call them and I'd say, hey I'm just trying to hone down this message, this marketing message for what we do. We have a lot of success in these particular areas, yada, yada, yada, but we want to try to articulate it in a way that's clear and unique and different to people who may be exposed to us for the first time. Would you mind if I run these by you? And then just run the different ideas past them.

Get their feedback; ultimately you're going to have to make your own decisions. The other thing that I would make sure you're doing that would give you insight, and I don't know if you guys are, what tools you all are using to survey, if you're surveying your audience. But if you've done any kind of…ya'll are because I know you have that survey tool option. Don't you all have like a questionnaire?

I would go to that questionnaire and I would look for common themes in that. And truly Paul I think ya'll ought to be able to figure it out mostly from that.

Paul: A lot of people say they want more trust, intimacy, and the biggest issue is communication problems. And when we try to market that way, we must be missing something. I mean I told you what we thought a USP was. Compassionate communication skills for couples and it kind of like, you went, huh? It did not resonate.

JP Maroney: Yes, exactly. I had a guy come to me the other day. He wrote a book and I don't even remember the real title of the book. He wrote me later an email and he said, my gosh, I wish I'd have known you before I sent the book to the printer because I'd have named it what you told me to name it. What I told him, I was talking about his workshop. He was going to do a workshop and he explained to me that he could basically take a college student and show them how to become a millionaire on six dollars or something.

He didn't say it that way. He said, you know if a college student, and he was talking about doing workshops at colleges. He said if a college student just started putting away whatever, six dollars or something a day, they would be a millionaire and he named the number of years. And so later in the conversation I said, hmm, how to go from graduation-no. How to go from graduate to millionaire on $6.66 a day or whatever the number was. Okay? That was a big promise.

That basically promised these people that if you buy this product, you'll get this result. So he was a big promise. So what ya'll promise your USP may not ultimately connect with what you teach. I mean it'll connect, but it may not directly relate to what you teach which is communication. Does that make sense?

Paul: Right.

JP Maroney: We'll talk about this more on the Q & A call on Thursday. But when you make a big promise to someone and connect it to them on some benefit or emotional level, it doesn't always speak exactly to what it is that you do. I don't know if that's clear to you or not.

Paul: Yes.

JP Maroney: In other words, you may not say we like, well I gave you great example earlier of my own instance when I first started speaking. I didn't tell people I taught management skills or team building or any of those things. I said, I teach entrepreneurs how to get their employees to think and act like owners in the workplace. Take personal responsibility. And people said, really? How do you do that? If you're getting that from, when you talk about testing, if you're getting that from people, you know you're on the right track. Because, even today, I'll have people say well what do you do and I've gone through many incarnations of this. You know, sometimes I'm just lazy and say well I'm a business growth strategist, you know. The easy answer and they'll shut up.

But if I want them to ask more questions, I'll say I help entrepreneurs grow their businesses by finding overlooked and under utilized profit opportunities in their company. And people go, how do you do that because if they're an entrepreneur and they're struggling, they're going to want to know. And if you can get your market to set up and go how do you do that? You're saying the right things. Fair enough?

Paul: Fair enough. I'm looking forward to the coaching call. It would be really helpful for me to hear; you know if you work with us but work just having you work with anybody on the call to really see how to take it from where they think it is to where it really is.

JP Maroney: Yes, I think this week's coaching call will be great. And it'll definitely apply directly to this USP. I can hear a lot of people. Now I know we're about to get into tactics and for those of you that are on the call, I'm going to re-mute the lines, just a second. See here. All right, the lines are muted and we're going to get back into the content for this second section which is tactical tune-up. And I have a feeling that a lot of people are going to go, boy, what did I do on Thursday's call? Do I ask a question about USP or do I ask questions about this postcard campaign I've been planning to do?

Well, you're going to have to make a decision on which you want to cover because we will have obviously a limited amount of time. But I will say this; USP is something that you guys need to get right. Every business needs to find a way to distinguish and differentiate itself from the competition. The USP just happens to be one of the best ways to make that happen.