Something far more important than having a Unique Selling Point..

Last week I went to a conference for Nursery Business owners. There was a great speaker/author/business owner there that actually I didn’t realise was going to be there, but I’ve seen him on numerous occasions and he really has his head switched on. In short he knows what he’s talking about. His name…..Dan Priestley.

During his presentation he was discussing that people don’t often buy from particular businesses because they are a super unique but actually from the rapport that has been built overtime but interactions.

The way Dan demonstrated his point was if you were asked to describe your best friend and why they’re better than anybody else’s friend, you’d probably start coming up with similar stuff to what other people say about their best friends. They’re friendly, they’re helpful, they’re funny, they’re caring maybe a bit crazy. That sort of thing.

This is almost like a clone of someone else’s best friend. So why do you consider your best friend to be better than mine?

The differentiator here isn’t that your best friend is better at baking or that yours can count quicker to 2398 than my friend (although they most certainly can’t!). The differentiator here is the time you’ve spent with them and the bank of good memories you’ve built together over time and that is why you’ve become closer with your best friend. So sorry to break it to you but our best friends are probably just as good as each other.

Now, if you take that theory then and apply that to your business, then the reason that people are not buying from you, it’s not because you’re completely and utterly unique in your sector because the chances are you share many similarities with those that do what you do. If you’re a web designer, you probably do similar things to other web designers. If you’re an accountant, you probably do similar things to other accountants. In fact if I had a penny for the amount of accountants I see with the tagline “We’re different to other accountants” then I’d have afforded my dream jaguar automobile by now.

The fact is, that if you’ve had more touch points with somebody, more interactions with somebody, and they like you enough to trust what you do then it doesn’t matter if you’re not completely different to other people in your sector. The fact is, you build that rapport over time. They like you and you are top of mind when it comes to them needing your service or recommending anyone for the particular service that you offer.

This is the thing that always bugged me. How can I create a really unique selling point for my business? I strongly believe it is a great way to market yourself if you can be completely unique in your market, but for many of us small-business owners, it’s a really tough task to become completely and utterly unique and have something that really is standout and at the same time truly beneficial to the audience.

What I want to concentrate on more now and what I encourage others to do, is actually increasing the amount of times that you do actually spend in front of your customers and that could be through books. That could be through videos. That could be through events that you put on.

Increasing touch points, so this is what Dan Priestly talks about, he preaches the seven-eleven- four rule, so seven hours of time spent with your prospect spending time with your business and the things that you’re talking about.

Eleven touch points whereby you have stuff for them to digest in various ways. Whether it be on Twitter, on Facebook, in real life, at events, through one-to- one conversations, through networking, whatever it might be.

Then locations, in seven-eleven- four, the four is for locations. If they met you before in four different ways or four different places, then they become to like, know, and trust you.

That is just a really clear sort of picture in my mind now that actually in a business, the unique selling point in the business actually isn’t the most important thing. As long as you offer a quality service or a quality product and you’re getting in front of those people more often, then you are likely to be the chosen one when it comes to them purchasing.

How can we achieve the 7/11/4 principal with video then? How can we build that rapport? With video it’s all about having videos out there online for people to digest and gorge on, that’s how Dan Priestley sort of refers to it. Have you got enough content online that prospects can just gorge on?

With video, that could be through thought leadership videos, where you’re expressing an opinion on a particular topic or a particular concern audiences might experience in your sector.

Through educational videos, so if you have a weekly video blog where you give hints and tips on
various things that can help your customer, and so if you’re a nursery owner, you might think about producing videos maybe that talk about nutrition for children or getting exercise for children or helping mothers cope with the demands of having a child. They’re a really a good way to go.

But also, for the videos about your company and about your beliefs and things like that, because people begin to know who you are. They begin to like you and begin to trust you.

That’s really what I wanted to talk about. It’s clear to me that that is the way to go, because struggling to find a unique selling point in a business, I strongly believe it’s a really tough thing to do and you can keep adding value and adding value, but at the end of the day, people don’t know who you are. That’s the thing that’s stopping you, it’s not the lack of value you offer.