Lesson 2:

The Most Important Question
You Must Ask Yourself

The first main issue in marketing is right message. What is that message, marketing message? What do you say to your marketplace, to your past, present and future prospects, clients and customers that is compelling, that is magnetic, that cannot be ignored, that must be responded to, that draws them to you like a night on a dark night draws moths? Do you have a great marketing message? We're going to ask some questions and find out.

Secondly, who do you say it to, and by deliberate strategy who do you not say it to? Being efficient in your marketing. Are you efficient? Are you smart about this? Or are you throwing mud against the wall? We're going to ask some questions and find out.

And third, the media, how you deliver the message to the market. Do you do that effectively? Do you do that affordably? Do you do that efficiently? Do you do that in a way that involves little or no manual labor and magnetically attracts people to you? We're going to take a look at that.

So in each of these three things, I'm going to give you one or two key ideas to take with you. And for starters, under message, I want to send you home with the single most important question anybody's going to ask you about your product, service, business or sales career as long as you're in it.

Master this one question, you take a quantum leap in ability to create income as a salesperson, business owner or marketer. This is the single most important question because the right answer to it, as I'll demonstrate, is the key to the marketing vault. It doesn't just marginally increase things, it multiplies them far beyond the ability of most people to even conceive. It is that important. And I'll give you a model, a demonstration.

Now the technical term for the answer to this question is USP. It stands for Unique Selling Proposition, that which differentiates you from all competition, direct and indirect. And here's the question.

Why should I, your prospect, choose to do business with you versus any and every other option available to me in your category? Why should I choose to do business with you versus any and every other option available to me in your category?

And when you have a great answer to that question, you can turn things upside-down.

8 Words That Built A Business Empire And Turned A
Down And Out College Kid Into A Multi-Millionaire

Example: model. I'm going to give you a model to use. A model of one of the best unique selling propositions invented in maybe the last two decades.

So what you want to do with this model is lay it down next to your Unique Selling Proposition, and see how they compare. And if they don't compare very well, then this one's a good place to start to build a great answer to this question.

This particular model, this unique selling proposition, was invented by a college kid. Two kids, orphans, no family resources, no athletic ability, no scholarships, determined to go to college. Here's the plan they hatch.

The plan they hatch is they find a crummy, miserable, stinking little retail business that's on the edge of campus, on the brink of failure. Its own is only too happy to lease it to them with no money down, just to get out from under the ongoing bills.

The plan is the two kids are going to run this business. One of them is going to go to school during the day while the other one works the business, then they're going to flip-flop. The other one's going to go to school at night. They're going to do everything in the business.

They're even going to sleep on cots in the back room, keep all the money. This is how they'll get through school.

Shortly into this plan, the business is continuing to hemorrhage money. One partner bails out on the other. The one who stayed behind dropped out of school, determined to honor his commitments and make this work, shortly thereafter invented a Unique Selling Proposition. I think it's eight words long.

And on the strength of his Unique Selling Proposition, he not only almost immediately turned a failing business into a successful business, but he multiplied it. Pretty soon, he had multiple outlets. He dominated his city, he dominated his state, he dominated North America. And in under five years, according to Fortune magazine, he became one of the 1,000 wealthiest citizens on the planet, all thanks to his eight-word Unique Selling Proposition.

His Unique Selling Proposition was so powerful – think about this – that for a decade, we could go out anywhere in North America, stop 100 people at random on the street, play word association with them, "What's the first thing that comes into your mind when we say blank," give them the generic equivalent of his business, and 80 or more of the 100, the first thing on the tip of their mind, the first thing on the tip of their tongue was the proprietary brand name of his business and what a good job he did.

If we go out to your city tomorrow and we stop 100 people at random on the street and we give them the generic equivalent of whatever it is that you do, real estate, insurance, stocks, bonds, computers, automobiles, pet grooming, doesn't make any difference, and 80 of the 100 instantly respond by telling us about you, by name, and what a great job you do, what's your market share going to look like?

That's called marketplace dominance. That's what this kid got. He turned his entire industry upside-down, had everybody chasing him for 10 years trying to catch up. You can do it too, with the lever of a great answer to this question, a powerful Unique Selling Proposition.

Now, if you guessed what his was, that's all well and good. But what I've said should hopefully motivate you not just to guess and shrug, but to want to microscopically analyze his and others like his to find clues that you can use to strengthen your own.

His was, "Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed." And on the strength of that Unique Selling Proposition, Tom Monahan took a crummy little corner pizza joint and built an empire.

When you analyze it, there's a number of things to spot. I'll point out three.

One, how narrowly he defined his position in the marketplace. Tom didn't try to be all things to all people. There's no mention of mama's recipe from the old country. There's no mention of only using sun-dried tomatoes gathered on the east side of the mountain on Tuesday. There's not even any mention of good pizza. There's truth in advertising after all.

There's 52 ways that I teach to build a USP. The one Tom used there is called "Opportunity Gap Exploitation." He identified the one thing in his industry that everybody did badly, that annoyed the consumers the most, focused on it, fixed it, and made it the core of his marketing message.

Secondly, what we teach is meaningful specifics, rather than vague generalities. Tom Monahan didn't say, "I'll get your pizza soon, fast, quick, quicker than the other guy, faster than a speeding bullet." Tom said, "Set your watch. It will be there in precisely 30 minutes or less." We call that gutsy, accountable marketing. Very few marketers, very few business owners are ever willing to do it, for obvious reasons. Those who do gain incredible leverage in the marketplace. And there's case history after case history to support it.

Third, a guarantee. Tom took all three of those things, and a number of other things we don't have time to analyze, and knit them together in this tight, concise little statement called a Unique Selling Proposition, the foundation of his entire marketing message. And it gave him the leverage to turn one little business into a global empire. You may not want a global empire, but you may like the leverage.

So the first little homework assignment is to think about why should I do business with you versus any and every other option available to me in your category? How's your answer? How's your marketing message?

Second, let's just assume you figure all that out. Let's assume you've got a great marketing message. At its core is a great Unique Selling Proposition. We're excited about getting it out to the marketplace. It's so good, we're ready to spend money getting it out to the marketplace.

Here's the next challenge: The world's greatest marketing message is no better than the world's worst marketing message if it's shouted at deaf ears. We do this a lot. Most people are not any more sophisticated about marketing their businesses, products or services than they were two decades ago.

In fact, here's the level of sophistication that most of us unfortunately settle for. Print up brochures; a lot of them. Stuff them in a big, burlap sack. Rent a plane. Fly low. Lean out, shake sack, hope.

We can do better. And in lesson 3, I'll reveal how and why we can easily do better.

Click here to go to lesson 3