R.I.P. – The Unique Selling Proposition is dead

Written by  Dean Rotbart

Zeroing in on the methods detailed in Michael R. Drew’s new e-book, one radio station boosted its audience by 29% and increased revenues by 22% in less than a year. “The #1 Way to Increase Your Close Rate,” available April 8th to April 10th to download for free from Amazon.com, buries the tried-and-true “Unique Selling Proposition” and crowns “What You Stand Against” as the optimal marketing and advertising approach of our generation.

A diamond may be forever, but a tried-and-true marketing axiom – the so-called Unique Selling Proposition – is mortal. In fact, it’s quite dead.
The widely held concept behind the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is that in a competitive marketplace, the best way to distinguish one’s product or service from the homogeneous pack it to define oneself with a single, unparralled trait that sums up in as few words as possible what makes you special.
“We try harder.” “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.” “Low Prices, Everyday.” “Diamonds are forever.” “The nighttime, coughing, achy, sniffling, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest medicine.” “That Was Easy.”
Many large companies and most small businesses still cling to the USP approach in their marketing and advertising, but they’re living in the past – and it’s costing them dearly.
That is one of three core, powerful takeaways to be found in the new e-book, “The #1 Way to Increase Your Close Rate: What You Stand Against,” by business coach and globally recognized speaker Michael R. Drew. Drew’s e-book, the first in a series scheduled to be released this year, is available for free from Amazon.com during a special three-day promotion, April 8 – April 10.
Drew, whose disruptive approach to building sales and brand has recently resonated from the halls of Harvard University to the keynote podium at the influential CEO Space International forum in Las Vegas, is an acute observer of the clocklike shifts in society and consumer tastes.
His new e-book expands upon the game-changing research and observations that he and co-author Roy H. Williams chronicled in their 2012 bestseller, “Pendulum: How Past Generations Shape Our Present and Predict the Future.”
“Pendulum,” in brief, posits that past is prologue and savvy business owners who can detect the 3,000-year old patterns of societal swings and excesses can harness the Pendulum to build communities of loyal customers and avoid the hazards of being out of sync with their needs and values.
Quite specifically, Drew’s “The #1 Way” e-book turns the vaunted Unique Selling Proposition (USP), and its first-cousin, the Unique Value Proposition, on their heads – providing Pendulum fans even more methods to apply the original book’s concepts to their lives and businesses.
Today, as detailed in “Pendulum,” society is a decade into a 40-year “WE Cycle,” during which people are inclined to work together for the common good, to prefer the truth to empty slogans, to crave for things that are real, raw and relevant. To quite simply, as Drew says, “be spoken to as adults.”
“Easy” may have once helped Staples surge past rival Office Depot in connecting with small business owners, but in our current “WE Cycle” the Staples slogan no longer enjoys the mandatory ring of credibility. (Have you visited an under-staffed Staples recently and required help from the store’s under-qualified hourly workers? It isn’t, truth be told, so easy.)
In “The #1 Way,” Drew gives last rites (at least for this Pendulum cycle) to the USP, noting that today’s consumers reject pretense and instead are attentive to hearing “What You Stand Against - WYSA.”
One clear example, detailed in “The #1 Way,” is the Canadian radio station that shifted its messaging from USP to WYSA. Today the alternate-rock broadcaster boldly proclaims it is “Beiber-free, Gaga-free with a no-Nickleback guarantee.”
Can you say, “Pendulum ka-ching?”
By defining itself by what it stands against, the station, Ottawa LiVE 88.5 hit the ratings jackpot, boosting its audience by 29% and increasing revenues by 22% in less than one year.
In his Amazon e-book “The #1 Way,” Drew illustrates how best to tap into the needs and tastes of prospective customers; how to craft marketing messages that consumers will respond to; and how to trounce your competition.
“Good service, good selection, fair prices and honest dealing are not relevant factors to define what you aren’t,” Drew cautions. Alternatively, he suggests, “you might say you are against price-gouging, shamefully bad service, and lying like the rug on the living room floor.”
Indeed, Drew and his Amazon e-book walk the WYSA talk.
“The #1 Way to Increase Your Close Rate” is against Unique Selling Propositions; it’s against saying in many, many superfluous pages what can be amply covered in a fast-paced, 15-minutes-to-read-and-digest e-book; it is against charging inflated prices for quality business intelligence (after all, the e-book is free from April 8th to April 10th); and it is definitely against conventional marketing wisdom.
Indeed, like Pendulum, “The #1 Way” (download link) is in-your-face disruptive business food for thought. Love it. Or hate it. Either way, it will rapidly help you define “what you aren’t.”



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