Four Easy Steps for Defining Your Unique Selling Proposition

Published 6 June 8 4:0 AM | Paul

Take a look at the Sales Proposition Chart from our recent Working Smarter series article "Four Simple Steps to Understanding Your Market".

The chart is designed to help you both determine your product's unique selling proposition and communicate to others.

"Unique Selling Proposition" sounds like a nice piece of marketing mumbo jumbo, but what does it mean to me, you ask? My answer is "A lot!"

After 25 years of seeing both success and failure in businesses of all kinds, I believe that it is essential to understand exactly

  • what you are selling
  • to whom
  • and why they buy from you and not a competitor.

Your "Unique Selling Proposition" is simply a fancy name for the answer to these fundamental questions, and the selling proposition chart is a simple template for answering them.

Let's step through it.

Step 1: Market

The first box is labeled "Market." The implied question here is "Who will buy your product?" Think carefully about the answers as you fill them out. It's often worth a discussion with your co-workers about each answer. You'll be surprised just how controversial this can be.

In my example, I am using our own product, SmartDraw. We define our market as Microsoft Office® users because virtually all of our potential customers also use Office®.

Step 2: Need

What simple need does your product satisfy?

In SmartDraw's case, it's the need to create business graphics.

Step 3: Pain

Now the questions get more difficult. What "pain" does your product relieve for the buyer?

This starts to differentiate your product from the competition.

In SmartDraw's case, most people consider creating business graphics to be a painful task: slow, difficult, and producing bad results.

Think of other business innovations and the pain that they removed. McDonald's® - the first fast food restaurant - what pain did they remove from the need to eat out inexpensively?

Answer: The slow service and unreliable quality from mom-and-pop short order restaurants. Predictability is a big part of what McDonald's sells.

Step 4: Solution

How does your product relieve that pain and therefore separate itself from the competition that still inflicts the pain? 

In SmartDraw's case, it's to automate the creation of business graphics that are fast and easy to make and look great.

The answer to steps 3 & 4 define your differentiation from the competition and your unique benefit to the customer. Once you understand this, you can communicate it more effectively to customers and generate sales more easily.

The Sales Proposition Chart is just one of four steps you can take to understand your market. Follow them all and you'll have everything you need to increase your sales and success.

Learn More about Building Unique Selling Propositions

If you'd like to see how to draw a selling proposition chart, please view our screencast "Building a Unique Selling Proposition with SmartDraw."

Also, if you'd like to try SmartDraw, you can download a free trial of SmartDraw.

SmartDraw 2008 Owners: To get the templates discussed in this document, download and run this file: http://www.smartdraw.com/downloads/sd2008/sd2008_Marketing.exe

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Comments

# Garry Dauron said on June 10, 2008 1:02 PM:

This is very good advice for everyone (especially engineers).

Thank you

# Aaron said on June 10, 2008 2:10 PM:

Gary,

Speaking as a recovering engineer I can say whole-heartedly that I agree with you.

# Dr. Brian Monger said on June 10, 2008 8:38 PM:

If your segmentation is based only on " in my example, I am using our own product, SmartDraw. We define our market as Microsoft Office® users because virtually all of our potential customers also use Office®.", I suggest you should get someone who understands marketing a whole lot better to be advising these folk

"Marketing mumbo jumbo" says a lot as well.

If you need some input let me know

Dr. Brian Monger

Exec. Director

The Marketing Association of ANZ (MAANZ)

# Aaron said on June 10, 2008 11:56 PM:

Dr. Monger,

I'm sure Paul will want to weigh in on this since it's his article, but I think that for all intents and purposes the article is meant to be a basic illustration of how USPs and Unique Selling Proposition charts can be used.

Obviously this information is pretty basic for marketing professionals but we consider this to be a decent primer for SmartDraw users who are not wholly familiar with USPs and Selling Proposition Charts. Our intention with these articles is to provide basic examples of how business graphics, such as selling proposition charts, can be used as management tools, or in this case, a tool for framing basic marketing concepts.

If you have some suggestions as to how we can do a better job with these articles then please let us know via blog comments or you can email me at astannard@smartdraw.com

# Paul said on June 11, 2008 1:59 PM:

My post was intentionally kept simple. It was meant to interest our audience, many of whom are not familiar with these marketing concepts, and encourage them to explore further. The graphic is a way of making the USP concept easier to understand and communicate.

Just as SmartDraw provides millions of ordinary computer users with access to easy business graphics, so our Working Smarter blog seeks to make common business concepts easy to understand and apply.

# Kim - Telemark said on June 18, 2008 2:20 AM:

I'm impressed with how you guys go the extra mile to add value to my SmartDraw investment. Thank you for this article and the rest og thw work smartes series.

I now recommend SmartDraw to all my business associates in Norway.

Keep up the good work!

# Aaron said on June 18, 2008 4:02 PM:

Kim,

I'm glad you feel that you're getting a lot of value out of SmartDraw and Working Smarter. If you have any suggestions for us please feel free to shoot me an email at workingsmarter AT smartdraw DOT com.

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