How a Terrific USP Built an Entrepreneurial Empire
Some years ago, two brothers determined they would put themselves through college by running a small business. Early on, the business was unsuccessful, and one brother bailed out on the other. The brother left with the business eventually came up with a USP that has made him a multimillionaire and revolutionized his industry.
His USP? "Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed." I don't need to tell you the name of his company. In fact, I did a little word-association survey with 50 people, asking them to say the first word that popped into their minds when I said, "pizza." Of the 50, 41 replied, "Domino's." That's almost 85%. Question: if we went out into your marketplace and asked 100 or 1,000 people to play the game, gave them the generic name for your type of business, and 85% of them responded by naming you, how well would you be doing?
I had the privilege of interviewing Tom Monaghan for a magazine article several years ago, and there's no doubt that his success and that of his company is linked to a complex list of factors, notably including his personal success philosophy and his ability to instill it in his franchisees. But there's also no doubt that his USP is largely responsible for the rapid rise and dominance of his company in the pizza industry. It has generated enough wealth to let Tom indulge his lifelong fantasy of owning the Detroit Tigers, with a $53 million-dollar price tag, collect classic cars, give most generously to his church and favorite charities, and be financially independent and secure at a relatively young age.
THAT is the power of a truly great USP.
It is worth working on the invention of a strong USP for your product, service, or business. And it's not necessarily easy. I know clients who've taken months, even years, to finally hit on a USP that they liked and that really worked. For each, the months of frustrating brain strain have paid off handsomely.
A list of "Idea Starters" for USPs appears at the end of this chapter. Another good source of ideas is the public library. There, for free, you can wander through yellow page directories and newspapers from cities all across the country as well as hundreds of consumer, business, trade, and specialty magazines.
Products That Have USP POWER
The Christmas shopping season always brings forth a crop of interesting new kitchen appliances—one recent year it was the Iced Tea Pot. When I first saw this advertised, I burst out laughing. Its manufacturer, the Mr. Coffee company, is laughing all the way to the bank. Imagine: we can no longer make iced tea in any old kettle; we must have the precisely correct Iced Tea Pot.
It reminds me of a funny phenomenon we have here in the Southwest: the Sun Tea Jar. Because we have searing sunshine every day, it's easy to sun-brew tea just by putting a large jar of water outside for a few hours with tea bags in it. Obviously, any old glass jar will do the job. But on store shelves you'll find large glass jars with the words "Sun Tea Jar" silk-screened on them for sale at four or five times what unmarked jars in the next aisle sell for. And you'll find people cheerfully buying them. After all, what kind of goofball would brew sun tea in a pickle jar?
Some years back, I was president of a fairly large manufacturing company with its own in-house print shop. One day I noticed how much paper was going to waste in the shop and brilliantly decreed that the waste be kept and made into pads for the office staff to jot phone messages on, thus eliminating the need to buy those square pads of pink paper imprinted "Phone Message" from the office-supply store. Why, I reasoned, should we buy little pads of paper at retail when we're already buying large truckloads of paper at wholesale?
I almost had a mutiny on my hands.
Pointing to the odd-colored, odd-sized pads we got free from our own print shop, the secretaries said, 'Those are scratch pads." Holding up the pink imprinted pads from the office-supply store, they said, "These are phone-message pads." End of discussion.
Purely through customized or proprietary appearance, these products have taken on USP POWER that is almost invincible.
If you really want to see this at work, visit an athletic-shoe store. I'm not much of a casual dresser, but, immediately before a day of walking at Disney World, I decided it would be smart to get some comfortable "sneaks." Forty minutes and eighty-five bucks later, I left the store with a thorough education: there are shoes for walking on pavement, for walking on grass, for walking a lot, for walking a little, for jogging, for tennis, basketball, soccer, football, baseball, trampolining, with pumps, without pumps—but there are no more "sneaks."
Consider these products with USP POWER:
■ Microwave dinners for kids to make for themselves
■ Clarion Cosmetics' "computer" that tells you what colors are right for you
■ Luzianne iced tea bags
■ A stress management seminar for career women
■ A shampoo and conditioner for "swimmer's hair"
And watch the TV commercials for the appetite suppressant products: there's one for people with the urge to binge late in the day, another for people who need help all day, and yet another "extra strength" one presumably for people with not even a smidgen of willpower.
It's even possible for a mundane product to get USP POWER purely from its package! McDonald's did just that for the cheeseburger with its McDLTs hot-side-stays-hot, cold-side-stays-cold two-bin styrofoam container. More recently, Yuban did it with premeasured filter packs for automatic coffee makers so you don't have to count out scoops.
Continue reading here: The Three Best Ways to Target Market
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