Your Unique Value Proposition – Stop Trying to Be Different

SUMMARY

How do you create your perfect “Unique Value Proposition” (UVP) or “Unique Selling Proposition” (USP) that will genuinely help you differentiate yourself from “the competition?” Too many of us get caught up in trying to be different…to be unique. Don’t try to be different just for the sake of being different.

I remember the first time an expired listing asked me what I was going to do different than all the other Realtors out there. I had no clue how to answer, until I realized that they did not really care about me being different. What they wanted was an agent that would deliver a better result than their previous agent.

What matters is value. What matters is results. That’s the conversation you should be having both with yourself and with your prospects and clients. Focus on value first and unique second. The most powerful way to be unique is to be the best. That way the value is assured and then you have all kinds of flexibility to bring your own unique angle to what you do.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hey, guys. It’s Kevin Ward here. It’s actually Saturday. I’m here at the office. I’m actually recording the audio version of The Book of Yes. It’s been really exciting over the last four months since the book was published at the end of January. It has been on the Amazon #1 Bestseller List almost the whole time for the last four months!

I’m just now getting around to recording the audio version to make the audio book of it. I’m sitting here with my Yeti microphone and my GarageBand. I don’t know if you can see that. I’m doing that. Then I’ve got here the actual book.

One of the things I’m recording right now is an objection handler for real estate agents whenever a seller asks, “What are you going to do different than the others? How are you different than all of the other real estate agents out there?” I think about that because it really is something that disturbs me. I see a lot of these….almost like a pop fad thing…and that is trying to be different. I think it became popular, I don’t know at what point, but in the last … I’ve been in real estate now 18 years so at some point in that time this whole concept of having a unique selling proposition or a unique value proposition became really popular. Everybody was trying to figure out, “How do I be unique? How do I be different?”

I really think it’s probably more than 18 years because whenever I got first in real estate, I remember the “hat lady.” I thought, “How corny is that, the hat lady?” That’s how she marketed herself. You’re definitely unique but I don’t know if there’s any value there.

I just had to share this thought, and that is if you’re in a business where you’re wanting to establish yourself in your niche, in your ground, and you want to establish a uniqueness about who you are, what you do, I want to just say this, stop trying to be different. The goal is not to be unique. The goal is not to be different. The goal is to add value to people. Whatever it is your business is, whatever it is you’re doing, your goal is to add more value to people, not to be different, but to be better. If you’re going to focus on a unique value proposition, focus on the value part of it, rather than the unique part. It’s okay to be different but don’t try to be different just for different sake.

I’m just going to share this because I think it’s very powerful. I remember, this was years ago, I’d been in the real estate business for a couple of years. I’d always been afraid to prospect, to call expired listings…homeowners that were in the luxury market because I grew up in a mobile home. I just didn’t feel worthy of it, and so I was afraid. I can remember one day I finally decided, “You know what? I’m going to start calling the luxury homes. I’m going to call the houses over a million dollars in Southlake.” I was in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. Southlake and Colleyville was that luxury market home that I was intimidated by.

I can remember calling an expired listing, a house that the property had been on the market and then the listing had expired. I called that house. It was over a million dollars in Southlake. I can remember her asking this question. She said, “Just tell me this one thing: What are you going to do different than all the other agents? I want you to send me an email with what you’re going to do different, and we’re going to take all those emails. We’re going to pick the ones that we like the best. Then we’re going to interview them.”

I can remember sitting there being totally stumped like, “Whoa. What am I going to do different?” It dawned on me… (It took me years to figure this out.) It finally dawned on me that they don’t really care about different. What they care about is “we’re trying to figure out who’s actually going to get us the better result, who’s going to get our house sold.”

Once I figured that out, it was like, I know the answer to the question. If ever a seller asks me, “What are you going to do different than any other agent?” Here’s my script here. “What are you going to do different than everybody else?” “Well, I’m going to get your house sold because that is what you want, right?”

See, I’m not going to go off into how I’m different because they’re not looking for me to be different. They’re looking for me to be better than their last experience. They had hired an agent to sell their house. The agent had failed, and so obviously they don’t want to repeat that experience.

They’re saying, “How do we know you’re not going to suck like the last agent did?” The way they ask the question is, “What are you going to do different?” They’re not caring about whether you’re different or not. What they’re caring about is are you going to deliver us a better result?

Don’t focus on being different. Focus on what your clients really want which is the value, which is the result. When you focus on that, not only will you win, but you can always expect yes.