It was 1988 and I was out of a job. And I was running out of time to provide for my young family of five. When I told people I’m opening a consulting company named Contract Marketing most responses were “great, just what the world needs – another out of work guy posing as a consultant.”

The initial offer I wrote up for the new firm was we operate as your company’s “fill-in” marketing department. If your chain was too small or too busy, I could take on any assignment based on my successful experience as an ad agency guy and C-level chain marketing officer.

I felt pretty good about Contract Marketing’s offer until I realized that any other chain restaurant marketing consultant could say the same seven words.

So I went back to positioning disciplines I’d studied. They had fancy names like USP (unique selling proposition), brand promise, product differentiation statement and so forth but all aimed at the same target: An offer is an offer your competitors do not or cannot make.

Fast forward to today where I conduct marketing coaching sessions at least once a week. When I ask my students to give me 8-15 words describing what their company offers, I get things like “best quality and service” or “we are the most responsive.”

In almost every case, company owners make offers that everyone else can say. They plead “yes, my competitors say it but we actually do it!” I say “how would I know?” I only have a few seconds to hear you so, you lose. I then ask lots of questions and propose ideas that may attract more attention.

• After finding out more details about a for-profit college whose offer was “tradition and excellence,” their offer is now “97% of our graduates are employed within 90 days.” That says tradition and excellence better than “saying” tradition and excellence in my view. 
• A data safety service I was working with whose theme was “we take the risk out of system transfers,” now says “we parallel your old system – free – until your new system is up.” Obviously it’s better to prove “no risk” than to say “no risk.”

We are all in organizations that are succeeding or we would not be employed. But we can stand out more if we focus on one offer that defines the benefit of working with is that no one else can say.

Here’s what the top four organizations in the Business of Good Investments say that others cannot:

• WorkPlace Media – we message, coupon and sample 71 million consumers where they work 
• Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers – fresh, never frozen chicken fingers, marinated for 24 hours, hand-breaded and cooked to order 
• Cleveland Whiskey – “pressure aged"™ bourbon 
• The Business of Good Foundation – we serve those who serve the poor

Let’s go back to the beginning. The 1988 out-of-work Tim finally decided that the one thing every chain marketing person faced was that 10% of their stores were lagging in sales. Yet at that time, no consultants offered to work on single stores and markets. So from 1988 to 1993, we offered:

• Contract Marketing fixes broken stores – one at a time.

It worked.

What can your organization say that no one else in your market or category can say?

I promise if you define it well and repeat it incessantly, success will inevitably follow.

Peace,

Tim McCarthy