photo credit: albbyy Recently blogger Jeremy Shoemaker expressed his frustration with people asking him how to make a large sum of money almost immediately with almost nothing to invest to do it.

You know “tell me how to get rich quick”.

A lot of entrepreneurs, business owners, and sales professionals don’t even realize they might own a small share of this mentality because of what they’re told. Here’s what I mean…

I get contacted by people all the time who want to know how to start a business from scratch with virtually no resources. Then when I tell them how to get the information they need the smart ones go get it, the majority do absolutely nothing, and a few get upset because what they really want is someone to do it for them for free. Good luck with that.

It’s no big secret if you lack resources the only way to succeed in sales is to trade sweat equity for the dollars you lack. And that’s exactly where the frustrating challenge lives. You see most of you are working hard.

You have no problem exchanging sweat equity for dollars it’s just that you’re investing your sweat equity in the wrong way on the wrong things. So no matter how hard you work you never achieve the sales success your hard work merits. After while this gets really old. Downright maddening in fact…

And when you discover why your hard work isn’t paying off like it should you’re going to get even madder. As long as you work based on the “sales is a numbers game” philosophy you are the one who’s going to break your back and get little from your efforts. Now I know you’ve had this concept shoved down your throat by sales managers and sales trainers for years.

Here’s a secret. Just because enough people say something is so doesn’t make it so. People loudly professed the world was flat too and that didn’t make the world flat either. In reality your sales aren’t lower than desired because of the way you are selling. Your sales are low because of the way you talk about what you’re selling.

No matter how hard you work. No matter how hard you try to work the numbers your sales will never be what they could be until you understand how to talk about what you’re selling. That means talking about what you offer in terms of what your best potential buyers are already looking for and already want to know more about. Once you cross through this barrier you could immediately increase your sales not by just a little but a lot.

Could you be working on the wrong things?

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?”

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