What You Need Is a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

To stand out in today’s competitive market, marketing and business development professionals need to focus on what’s unique and special about the business. What you need: A Unique Selling Proposition (USP)—a single statement that anyone can easily understand, a sentence that clearly defines what makes you better, different or unique.

Comparing the two positions will quickly point out that they are very different. Today’s savvy business executive recognizes that the traditional sales executives’ role of “recruiting, hiring, training and motivating” sales pros no longer is enough to keep the company growing and competitive.  Elements of marketing are being added to the list of responsibilities.  And [...]

Ever Wonder How You Can Maximize Your Trade Show ROI? Last week, Econsultancy.com posted a useful article on “10 Tips For Selecting the Right Industry Trade Show“—excellent tips if you’re attending as a consumer. But if you’re attending a trade show to promote your product or service and get new business, trade shows can be [...]

There is no entrepreneur or senior level executive I know of that hasn’t experienced serious stress during the course of their business career. Certainly there are times when the pressure builds and builds and builds – forcing executives and line personnel alike to struggle just to keep up!

Stress causes all kinds of problems – more often than not compromising the individual’s ability to concentrate and get work done. Certainly the costs of neglecting stress in your business can be very high. And, strangely, stress is sometimes overlooked as a health and safety issue by small businesses. Yet the unexpected absence of just one member of staff can affect productivity, and efforts to secure cover can be costly and time-consuming.

This is doubly true during a busy season – including the Holiday season whether your company markets to the seasonal market or not.

I don’t have to tell anybody in business that competition today is stronger, more aggressive and less sensitive to the impact it has on local competition. We only have to look at category killer stores (BestBuy, Frys, Lowes/Home Depot) together with big-box stores (WalMart/Target/etc) to get a sense of how different today’s marketplace is from that of even as recently as 20 years ago.

The difference is most heavily felt with retailers whose cost of product they buy from vendors is significantly higher than that of their mega competitors. How big a difference? It can be as much as 20-30%. This explains why clients and friends in business often say that “X competitor” is selling product at less than I can buy it from my vendors”.