Beyond the USP: How Will Your Business Win?

Ask a business owner what makes their company different and you will often hear familiar answers.

“Our people.”“Our service.”“Our expertise.”“We go the extra mile.”

These may all be true. But if your competitors give the same answers, how much do they help a customer choose you?

For years, businesses have been encouraged to identify their Unique Selling Proposition. Find the thing that makes you different, put it into a sentence and build your marketing around it.

I think that puts too much weight on the sentence.

The more useful work is deciding how your business will win, then building the capability to make that choice credible.

Does your USP stand up?

A clear USP can help explain an offer. The difficulty comes when we expect it to explain the whole business strategy.

Something can be unique without being particularly valuable. Equally, something valuable can be relatively easy for a competitor to copy.

A promise of faster service, for example, raises several questions. Faster at what? Does speed materially affect the customer’s outcome? Can you deliver it consistently? Can you do so profitably?

And what happens when someone else makes the same promise?

The claim needs substance behind it. Otherwise, you have an attractive line with very little commercial protection.

What makes a competitive advantage sustainable?

A sustainable competitive advantage gives your chosen customers a meaningful reason to choose you, supported by something competitors find difficult to reproduce.

That might be specialist knowledge, a trusted route to market, a particularly effective operating model or relationships built over many years.

It may also be a combination of capabilities. None has to be unique on its own for the whole to be difficult to match.

Consider a specialist engineering business. Its advantage could come from understanding a particular production environment, holding the right components, diagnosing faults accurately and getting equipment running again quickly.

“Excellent service” barely begins to explain it.

The customer values less downtime. The advantage sits in the expertise, availability and working practices that make that outcome dependable.

Sustainable also means maintained and developed. Customers’ needs change. Competitors improve. An advantage needs investment and attention if it is to remain useful.

Start with “We will win by…”

This is a phrase I use with founders and leadership teams because it brings the discussion towards a choice.

We will win by…

Completing that sentence well requires you to decide which customers you are serving, what matters most to them and where your business can build a credible advantage.

“We will win by providing excellent service” leaves almost everything open.

A more useful statement might be:

“We will win by helping independent manufacturers reduce production downtime through specialist diagnostics and dependable access to critical parts.”

Now there is something to work with.

It points towards the expertise you need, the stock you hold, the customers you pursue and the evidence you should collect.

It also raises a commercial test: can you deliver that outcome at a margin that supports the business?

The sentence expresses your strategic choice. The advantage comes from the capabilities you build behind it.

Your choice should change your decisions

If “we will win by…” is useful, it should influence where time, money and leadership attention go.

It should help you decide which opportunities to pursue, what to develop and what to decline.

A business choosing to compete through deep specialist expertise may need to turn away work that stretches it into unfamiliar territory. One competing through dependable delivery may need to prioritise capacity and consistency before adding more services.

Those choices can feel uncomfortable, particularly when there is revenue on the table.

But every opportunity carries a demand on the business. Taking everything can weaken the very capability customers choose you for.

A clear strategic choice gives your team a shared basis for those decisions. It also helps explain why an apparently attractive opportunity may not fit.

Put it to the test

Before you settle on your statement, ask:

• Value: What customer outcome does this improve, and what evidence supports that?

• Credibility: What do we have, or need to build, to deliver it consistently?

• Defensibility: What would make it difficult for a competitor to match?

• Choice: What will we prioritise, and what will we deliberately decline?

Then identify the two or three actions needed to strengthen it. Give them owners, measures and a review date.

The wording can evolve as the evidence improves. What matters is that it guides action.

How will you win?

Ask your leadership team to complete “we will win by…” independently.

Compare their answers.

If they describe different customers, different strengths or different priorities, you have found a valuable conversation to have before committing more resources to growth.

Commercial performance improves when decision quality improves. Being clear about how you intend to win is one of those decisions.

If your business is growing but the choices behind that growth remain unclear, let’s talk.

About the author

Mark O’Neil is the founder of Kinetic Mentoring and works with founders and leadership teams on strategic decisions around growth, focus, funding and execution.

Mentor to Founders When the Decisions Get Heavy.

Clarity. Momentum. Results.