By now, I hope you understand the importance of having a unique position in the marketplace to grow your business and sell more countertops.
Not only will it help you win more jobs and charge higher prices, it will help you attract higher quality customers.
We all want to work with people who are easy-going and who don’t haggle over price. If I was to narrow down your ideal customer, my guess is that they would be someone who knows exactly what they want, has high-end tastes, deep pockets, and will send you lots of referrals.
The way to attract friendly, easy to please, wealthy, and popular customers is simple. You must prove to them that you are the better choice.
Your unique selling proposition is essential for showing what makes you better and why.
In this course so far, we’ve talked about the areas where you can show how you are better by identifying who you serve, what you sell, and what is unique about what you do. Yesterday, we added your negative promise and a time frame.
A gutsy guarantee
We have now reached the last step, and this step is imperative because it removes all risk from your customer. If you really want to win better, higher paying customers you have to add a gutsy guarantee.
When done the right way, removing risk for your customer essentially eliminates any objections they have in buying from you. If customers can see that you are the best, and there is little or no risk to buy from you, you can charge higher prices and close more sales than you have ever seen before.
The way you reduce risk to a customer is by taking on the risk yourself. This happens when you provide a bold guarantee. We’ve been developing your USP and making a lot of promises. Now, we add an “or else” statement:
- Or else you will refund
- Or else you will replace
- Or else you will repair
In our industry, these types of guarantees are risky because of the hard costs involved. Instead of shying away because of the risk, let’s instead look at the potential gain.
Offer what your competitors won’t
First, your competitors won’t be willing to offer a refund guarantee. Offer one, and you can effectively win a lot of their prospects.
In practice, very few customers actually act on a refund or replacement guarantee, so my advice is to go big and go bold. Better to win a lot of sales than to worry about the money you will lose to make an unsatisfied customer happy or the small percentage of people who will take advantage if they’re allowed to.
Even still, there are ways you can eliminate abuse and mitigate the risk you are putting on yourself by offering a gutsy guarantee.
For starters, you can make your guarantee conditional. Maybe your guarantee is only valid if the customer uses your interior designer or orders a specific type of counter.
You can also reduce risk to yourself by adding a time limit to your promise, such as 30 days or one year from purchasing.
The one thing to keep in mind is if your competitors can offer a similar kind of promise. Your goal is to be so bold that they can’t even come close. Differentiating yourself in the marketplace isn’t easy, and it does involve some risk. There is a lot of reward involved if you can do it, though, and if you can do it right.
Elements of a USP
To recap, the requirements of an effective unique selling proposition are:
- It must state the specific benefit you will get with the product.
- It must be one that your competitors either cannot, or do not, offer.
- It must be so strong it can move the masses.
- It must be tested.
Use the steps we’ve learned to create a winning position against your competitors that they won’t be able to match. I can’t promise you will achieve world domination, but being number one in your markets won’t be far from reach.
