Build a Better USP: Make Your Value Easier to Choose

You can be very good at your work and still struggle to explain why someone should hire you. You know the years of practice behind it. You know the range you can bring. Then someone asks what you do, and the answer becomes a tour of everything you have ever been paid for.

There is useful experience in that answer. The buyer may still be wondering where they fit.

A unique selling proposition, or USP, gives the right buyer a clear, believable reason to choose you. It connects something they want with something distinctive you can deliver. The challenge is to make that connection easy to understand without flattening the person or business behind it.

I would start with a few decisions about the work you want to win. The sentence comes after that. Otherwise, it is remarkably easy to spend an afternoon rearranging adjectives.

Give your range a clear starting point

If you have several skills, narrowing your message can feel uncomfortable. You might worry that choosing one audience will hide the other things you can do.

For this exercise, choose one buying situation. You can have a version for each genuinely different service. Start with the work you most want to win next; build other versions only when the buyer and need actually change. A filmmaker hiring a composer, a recording artist hiring a producer and a company hiring regular audio support may value different parts of the same person's experience.

Your capabilities can remain broad while your opening becomes specific. Once someone sees the relevance, there is room for the longer conversation.

Marketing author Seth Godin's work on the smallest viable audience offers a useful starting point: decide whom you intend to serve and what you intend to do for them. You are making a choice about where to be useful.

1. Picture the person making the decision

“Small businesses” is a large crowd. “The founder who needs a customer story ready for a product launch” gives you someone to talk to.

Describe the person, the situation and the decision in front of them. Who can hire you? Who influences that decision? What has happened that makes your work relevant now?

Those are different roles. A generous colleague may introduce you, while someone else approves the project and pays the invoice. Write for the buyer first, then make your explanation easy for the colleague to pass along.

Choose a buyer you want to serve and can realistically reach. A beautifully defined audience is of limited use if you have no sensible way to start a conversation with anyone in it.

2. Name what gets better for them

Your buyer needs to understand the change your work creates. Start with what you do, then ask: What does that allow the client to do, feel or achieve?

A service feature might be an early planning conversation. Its value could be helping the client settle the direction before expensive production begins. Technical versatility might let a creative team explore several approaches without bringing in another supplier. The value depends on the situation.

Ask a past client what was happening when they hired you, what they hoped would change and what they found most useful. Listen for their words. An answer such as “I needed someone who could help me decide” tells you more than another paragraph about being solutions focused.

Use numbers when you have defensible numbers. Creative outcomes also need evidence, but you do not need to invent a percentage improvement in emotional impact. A specific scene, an agreed deliverable or a client's account of the collaboration can be more honest and useful.

3. Understand the choice they already have

Your prospect has alternatives. They might hire the person they already know, ask someone on their team, use a standard product, postpone the project or keep struggling with it themselves.

Write down the most likely alternative for your chosen buyer. Then ask: When would my approach be a better fit, and when would it not?

This keeps your USP grounded. If someone needs a straightforward task completed at the lowest possible cost, your highly collaborative process may add little value. If they need help making difficult creative decisions, that same process could be central to the choice.

You do not need to criticize the alternative in your pitch. Understanding it helps you explain the circumstances in which your work earns its place.

4. Find a difference that matters

“Experienced,” “passionate” and “high quality” may all be true. They give a buyer very little to distinguish you by. So does a description of what everyone competent in your profession is expected to do.

Look for a particular combination of experience, judgement, style and working practice. Then connect it to the client's outcome. An unusual background matters when it changes how you understand the problem or deliver the work.

For a creative professional, the difference might be a recognizable artistic quality, a way of interpreting a brief or an especially useful approach to collaboration. Be careful with a strength such as versatility: explain what your range makes possible for this buyer.

Here is a hypothetical example. A documentary editor might replace “I am a versatile editor with a passion for storytelling” with:

That describes a buyer, a result and a specific practice behind the promise. It gives the buyer something to assess. The editor would still need to confirm that this practice matters to the clients they want.

The word “unique” can send you searching for a claim that nobody on earth could make. Aim for a meaningful, credible distinction within the choices your buyer is actually considering. Claiming to be the only provider requires evidence.

5. Put evidence beside the promise

For every important claim, identify something you can show. If you promise a distinctive sound, choose a sample where it is audible. If you promise a clear process, show how you set expectations and handle revisions. If you say your work improves an outcome, explain the starting situation, your contribution and what changed.

Keep the evidence proportionate. One relevant example with a clear explanation can do more work than a portfolio that asks the buyer to find the connection for themselves. Use client work and testimonials only where you have permission.

Your values belong here too. If you value respect, describe how clients experience it. If you value craft, show the care in the finished work. If you value reliability, make promises your actual working habits can support.

This is where Values Driven Achievement becomes practical: the words you use to win the work need to match the way you do the work.

Write a version you can say aloud

Now bring your answers together. Try this starting sentence:

I help [specific buyer] achieve [wanted result] through [distinctive approach].

Follow with one relevant example that makes the promise believable.

You may need two sentences. You may use different words entirely. Keep the buyer, the value and the reason to believe. Include a familiar description of your service so nobody has to guess what you actually sell.

The USP is the underlying reason to choose you. Your elevator pitch is the short spoken introduction that carries it into a conversation. Your website and proposals can explain it in more depth.

Say your introduction aloud. If it sounds like something you would never say to a person, rewrite it. Ask a trusted listener what they think you do, whom it helps and why someone might choose you. Their answer shows you what travelled.

Then make a request that fits the conversation. With a potential client, that might be, “Would it be useful to look at a relevant example?” With a colleague, it might be, “Does anyone come to mind who is working on that kind of project?” Give people room to answer honestly. An introduction spends some of their trust, too.

For what happens after that introduction, my simple sales process walks through the conversation, evidence and buying decision.

A useful first draft in 30 minutes

Take a blank page and set a timer. This is enough time to form a first version you can test; learning what buyers actually value takes real conversations.

In that conversation, ask what mattered when they chose a provider, what alternatives they considered and what made the decision difficult. Then share your draft and ask what is clear, what is missing and what they would need to see to believe it. A polite “sounds good” is encouraging, but it gives you little to work with.

Notice whether people recognize the need, ask relevant questions and understand which example to look at next. Revise the words and, when necessary, the offer. Better wording cannot create demand for work the buyer does not need.

You already do the work. This is part of doing the work to get the work: choosing whom to help, explaining the value and making it easier for the right person to take the next step.

Who is one person you could test your first version with this week?

Build a business that fits your strengths

If you want help turning your skills into a clearer offer and a practical plan for winning work, explore business coaching with ViDA.

Adam Kreek is an executive business coach, Olympic gold medallist and author of The Responsibility Ethic.

Further reading and acknowledgements: this original exercise draws on Geoffrey Moore's positioning work, Shannon Susko's work on core customers, Verne Harnish's work on brand promises and Propel Your Business resources on customer needs and benefits. The quotation above is from Seth Godin's “The smallest viable audience” (22 May 2022).

Portrait credit: Seth Godin, photographed by Joi Ito (2009), CC BY 2.0. Cropped and treated with Canva’s Slate filter.