Often also called as your Unique Value Proposition, it is the single factor that sets you apart from your competition, and that draws customers to you. Consider the following USPs:

• Domino's Pizza: Pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, else it is FREE!
• Head & Shoulders shampoo: Get rid of your dandruff!
• Brown Co. discount broker: Fixed low margin rates!
• LensCrafter: Eyeglasses in one hour or less

And there are many more examples of successful companies with great USPs.

Does every company have to have a USP? In short, yes. Successful companies often start out with a single USP, but as they become successful, they may have more than one USP. For example, Fedex started out with a promise to deliver your letter overnight - guaranteed. And as they delivered on that, their perception, in the minds of the customers, became one of reliability, in addition to efficiency. This helped Fedex expand their services to 2-day and 3-day deliveries at lower rates.

A USP helps you focus your energies on the factors that will distinguish you from the rest of the pack, and helps drive business to you. What might often surprise you is that only a certain percentage of your customers will actually do business with you due to your USP. The rest of your customers (could be as high as 60-70% of your customers) are doing business with you for reasons that you may be totally unaware of!

It could be your location, your prices, your customer service, your product mix- and all the while you thought your USP was your money-back guarantee! This then points to the need for getting customer feedback, and if you find out that the main reason for your appeal is different from what you thought- it may be useful to emphasize that aspect in your marketing.

How do you develop a winning USP?
First, study your industry, and your competition. You would have done this as part of your competitive analysis already. Expand the field of study to more number of competitors. Note the unique qualities that each of the competitors possesses, i.e. what are their USPs? Record them all. Now figure out why you would do business with you than with your competition.

What is the single greatest unmet need that you are fulfilling? It could be personal attention, customer service, price, value, product mix, services mix and so on. Perhaps you can get that rare item easily, or you specialize in science & technology books exclusively, or because you train customers in arts & crafts apart from selling arts material. In general, offering value is better than offering price discounts. Pricing is not something that a small business can successfully compete in for an extended period of time, and the moment any business becomes commoditized (as books have become), it is better to leave that business for good.

Identifying the X factor
After identifying more than such factor, now walk through them and determine which amongst those may have an actual appeal for your target audience. When the first Laundromat introduced availability of a coin changer, you can be sure that it pulled in plenty of traffic! When the first flavored ice-creams came into the picture, customers flocked to them. In other words, small additions and variations on a theme immediately attracted additional traffic to a business. The rest was now upto the business to deliver. So choose the factor that you believe will give you

• the best edge in the competitive landscape (i.e. cannot be easily replicated by competition)
• will appeal the most to your customers
• that you can deliver on most consistently and reliably

Once you have identified such a factor (or two), focus sharply on them, and ensure that you can come through on your USP. Offer guarantees or other benefits to your customer in case you fail to deliver on your USP. Make it iron-clad, and build your business around this USP. Of course, as you gain traction, check with your customers to see if the USP you believe in was the reason they purchased from you!

Let us take this subject matter a level deeper.

Truth is, you are a unique individual, as is every member of your venture. Even if, superficially, you offer everything identical to your competition, there will be natural differences in the way those services are offered. Let those differences shine through! Let your uniqueness come through in your business - in your marketing, sales copy, services & products.

Customers will be automatically drawn to your unique nature and you will begin getting traction (even in a saturated market). Continue focusing on your unique nature & talents and those of the individuals working with you. Tap into their unique talents as well, and let that shine through in your business. As you spend time focusing on these aspects, you will come to the realization that your ultimate USP is you and your people  and that you can develop a winning USP on these factors alone.

In fact, having a USP that does not take you and your people into account, is doomed to failure for you won't be able to deliver on the USP consistently and reliably and with quality. Or else it may take so much out of you that you won't have the energy to devote to all other aspects of the business (such as marketing, accounting, delivering other services and so forth).

So, know yourself and your people, and deliver your USP taking into account yourself, your resources, the competition and your customers.