A Vital New Look At Your Selling Proposition

Selling Propositions (SP’s) have come a long way since the original USP – Unique Selling Proposition. You might be familiar with the ESP and TSP, but what about the ISP?

I had the wonderful pleasure of being at a presentation with Siimon Reynolds renowned Australian entrepreneur and business builder. He was presenting at the April NSW Chapter meeting of the National Speakers Association of Australia, and amongst many brilliant points, including his definition of Brand – “the thoughts that people are having about your product or services” – perfect…..he stepped through three SP’s (Selling Propositions) required by every business owner and salesperson.

The three selling proposition concepts are:

1. Your USP – Unique Selling Proposition
2. Your ESP – Emotional Selling Proposition and
3. Your TSP – Tribal Selling Proposition.

I don’t want to go into these in too much detail here. The first two USP and ESP are fairly straight forward. The USP or Unique Selling Proposition has been around for a long time now, and is identifying what is truly unique about your product and service offering. In a world where the ‘sameness syndrome’ abounds, that is, your competitors can probably match your USP, having something ‘unique’ is not an easy task at all.

Another way to consider the USP is to change it to USPs – make it plural. What I mean by this is that rather than arriving at one unique selling proposition, have a range of selling propositions or value units is another way of considering them and when you’re with a client or prospect, select from the list of selling propositions or value units to create a Unique Value Proposition for that prospect or client. This is what tailoring the sale is all about.

ESP or emotional selling proposition is considering what it is about your product or service offering that will affect the emotional deciding values of your prospects and clients. Emotions can range dramatically from providing excitement, removing fear, building pleasure, reducing pain, experiencing enjoyment, removing frustration etc.

Siimon also mentioned the most current selling proposition which he referred to as the TSP – Tribal Selling Proposition. The social networking phenomenon of things like facebook, youtube, linkedin, twitter, are well aligned today with a growing trend of people wanting to belong to communities of like-minded people. The Tribal Selling Proposition is how does your product or service offering link your customers and prospects to a community of some kind where they feel they want to belong.

And I’d like to add a fourth selling proposition that I’ve been researching and coaching on for some time, however it’s only been recently that I’ve come up with a term to define it. So the fourth selling proposition is ISP….and it has nothing to do with your internet service provider.

Your ISP is your Intentionomic Selling Proposition. O.K…..so I’ve taken some liberty with spelling and created a new word, but stay with me on this for a moment. Readers of this blog and those who have followed my ever deepening understanding, research and philosophy of selling and consumerism will know that for the past few years I’ve been suggesting that one of the key success factors for salespeople is to have a bigger “WHY”.

A bigger why is all about intention. And just like price or the economic value that’s involved in any purchase, I believe that there is a value placed on the intention of the salesperson when they sell what they sell to the buyer.

So let’s call this economic value of intention “Intentionomics”. To take this further, your ISP or Intentionomic Selling Proposition is being able to be clear about your bigger why when you sell what you sell. Our intentions are the platform upon which our thoughts, actions, behaviours, habits and success stand.

The ISP is a new perspective on selling and approaches a much deeper philosophical level of success selling.

I look forward to sharing more of my research with you as it continues to develop and welcome any feedback.

A Book Gift For You

I’m writing a series of books on this new research. They will be part of a series called “The Teachings”. The first is still in draft form, and although it isn’t directly related to sales, the message is clearly important for everyone in sales.

I would like to provide you with a gift of the pre-release draft copy in eBook format for you. And once you’ve read it, please send me your thoughts. I would certainly value them.

To access your gift prelease copy click here