Why Should I Buy from YOU?

Apr 06 2009

Posted by: Cheryl Clausen in marketing, tags: increase sales, increasing sales, unique selling proposition, value proposition

photo credit: tiny_packages

Rarely are you the only entrepreneur, business owner, or sales professional offering whatever you offer for sale.

Because there are others selling the same thing you are - your buyers have choices, lots of choices in fact. If you don’t stand out you become just another sheep in the flock.

In most cases it’s just as easy to buy from your competitor as it is to buy from you.

That is unless or until you give them a reason why they should buy from you. Unfortunately, most people never identify this reason. Consequently, they continue fighting for the table scraps from those who dominate their market.

Sometimes people try to copy their most successful competitor. The problem with copying is it makes you an also ran. Why would someone want an also ran version of the real deal?

They don’t.

So if you want to increase your sales you have to make it perfectly clear to your prospective buyers why they should choose you over all their other options. Don’t forget you aren’t just competing with the people who sell what you sell you’re also competing with the most enticing option of all. The most enticing option is the option of doing nothing.

For years marketers have referred to the reason someone should buy from you as your unique selling proposition (USP) or value proposition. No matter what you call it the reason you should develop one is so buyers understand their reason why for buying from you. However, if you’ve ever tried to come up with a value proposition you probably found it so hard to do you gave up in frustration.

Sonia Simone came up with three categories of unique selling propositions that she refers to as: the Cross-roads USP, the Metaphor USP, or the Persona-driven USP. By her definition a Cross-roads USP is putting two seemingly unrelated ideas together. In case you don’t have a dictionary handy, a metaphor represents a symbol used to represent something. And Persona-driven is based on the idea that your personality or fame is enough to drive your uniqueness.

Hmmm, great ideas for big business but what are you supposed to do… how does that work for you? The challenge is to succinctly and clearly communicate to your buyers why you are the best choice for them.

In order to do that though you must first know and understand what they’re looking for.

If you don’t know what they’re already looking for first you run the risk of coming up with a fantastic USP based on speed when your best buyers are looking for reliability.
To get it right interact with your current buyers and potential buyers to discover what their looking to buy right now.
Then find out what’s most important to them about what it is they’re buying.
Next see if this translates to what you’re selling.
If not, find out what is important to them when it comes to buying what you’re selling.

Now you’re ready to work on sharpening your USP so in just a few words your buyers “get” why you are exactly what they’re looking for.

So tell us, “Why should people buy from you?”

Let’s get some reader feedback going. There are over 2.500 regular blog readers here don’t just lurk use this post to help each other. The only rule for comment is keep it constructive and polite.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.