What is Your Selling Point?
You are peculiar in the whole world. You neither have duplicates nor triplicates. You are the only one copy of yourselfyour own mirror! Your eyes, your head, your fingerprints, your footprints, your voice,your thoughts, your auraeverything you are or dois all unique to you and you alone. To no-one else in the creation as you are specially made to be different!
The term Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is employed in marketing and advertising to depict what a product, brand, organisation or service has that others do not have. Such a quality stands it out from all others. It may be product utility, taste, size colour, shape branding, texture or service satisfaction in terms of solution to people's problems. Therefore, every brand is unique in its own sense. Each musician, each script writer or camera crew or editor or teacher or bookmaker or builder or baker or web designer is unique for something different.
Right from the cradle, each child has their peculiarities. Some are good listeners; some are voracious; some are observers; some are independent, given the opportunity; some love music; some love pictures; some love out-going; some love privacy; some love building castles,some love gatherings, some ask challenging questions; some love to be left alone.
Others crave for dressing elegantly or always scribbling or designing. The list is endless as each child is fond of doing a particular thing always. That is the USP of that child.That is the platform.
Whether it is tagged Unique Selling Power, Unique Selling Point, or Unique Selling Propositionwhatever appellation you preferit is your strength which sets you out from others. That is your strengthyour unique selling position. It is the instrument within yourself that you use to sell yourself to the world. Can you write or do you love writing? Can you organize people or address them convincingly when there is crisis? Do you love working with children? Do your pieces of advice work for people? Do you always think your way out of trouble? Can you drive a car, operate and repair computers? Can you watch someone do a complex thing and do same on your own? Can you work independently with little or no supervision? Can you turn any commodity to money? Can you manage resources prudently especially money? Can you draw or plan pages of a book or magazine? Can you represent events in cartoons or poetry? can you teach people what they need to know better? Can you work many hours a day or a little longer than other people?
If you can do any of these or hundreds of others not mentioned in this write-up, you definitely have a strength which millions of others do not have. If many others have it, you will not be on the same aggregate in accomplishing it.
Many people do not excel in life because they do not listen to their USP. Parents want their children to become lawyers, doctors, engineers even when these children have inclination to do courses like fine art, music, or language. A lot many people would have been greater than who they are today if they had been allowed to choose their careers in line with their USP.
As a student, which course(s) do you understand the most? In which one can you score highest mark? When you dress up, which of your dress styles do people admire most on you? Indigenous or English? Which of the colours make people admire and want to relate with you? Blue or black or yellow or green? The one majority of people admire on you is different from the one you prefer for yourself. This is because people see you more than yourself.
As a lecturer, which of the courses you handle do your students pass most? Which one do they enjoy very well when you are delivering? This is your area of strength where you can impact more on your students.
I never really identified my strength -although I had been demonstrating it for six years after my National Youths service Corpsuntil I was interviewed in a marketing firm. In the middle of the interview, the HR Manager candidly told me that I was more of a PR person than marketing. Since that day, my life has changed because I later searched and searched, and truly discovered that I am a midfielder, a supporting stricker, a power-house, a planner and a pass-maker rather than a flank player or defender or top-stricker or goalkeeper. Since then, I have been working as a writer, business development manager, research facilitator and public relations planner. It has really helped my career.
Your strength is your passport that gives you access to corridors of power, opportunities and networking you desire. People excel in dress-making, building, events planning, nursing, photography, speech-making/writing, lecturing, selling and a host of others because they themselves or other people beside them have identified their USPand they work on it.
Listen to yourself very carefully. Observe yourself. Listen to people's comments about yourself. That which they say to your face about you constantly is your USPyour poweryour strength!
I once visited a branch of FCMB in Ikeja, Lagosin 2009 as a relationship manager in healthcare. After my relationship discussions with my clients, I stumbled on a lady classmate with whom I graduated in mass communication nine years after. The first question she asked after our compliments to each other was 'do you still write?'
One may wonder that after all, the writer did mass communication; he should be a natural writer! Not all communication graduates can write creatively and voraciously. And if they do, not on the same pedestal.