The Vision
By
Dave Tate
From 10,000 Feet, The View Is Clear: The Vision
Q. What is your value proposition to clients and customers?
The Early Years
A: Wow, the question of all questions! This is the one that drove me nuts in
the early years. When I started the business I had no idea what I was doing but
I had a basic vision of what I wanted to do. I wanted to bring together my three
worlds - personal training, strength coaching, and powerlifting (strength
athletes) so they could all learn from one another. Having been associated with
all these groups for most of my life I knew what a great resource each was, but
I also knew they all pretty much kept to themselves. My goal was to provide a
means where we could all share and learn from each other and create a great
training resource that could change the way the world would see the strength
development process. So, I knew where I wanted to go but had no idea what to do
to make it happen.
This vision provided me with enough passion to seek out what I didn’t
understand. I spent countless hours (or, should I say, days, months and years)
reading and speaking to everyone I could who knew business, owned a business or
consulted with businesses. I would venture to say 90% of my time in the early
years was spent reading and studying business.
The one question EVERYONE seems to want to know is, "What is your USP (unique
sales proposition)?" To make matters worse, they want me to answer this in
one sentence. This would drive me out of my mind. I would think I had it and
then realize that "advancing training into the 21st century" was not it. Then I
came up with another great one - "your strength is our business" - and saw how
stupid that was. I just gave up and figured I did not have a USP and that I had
so much more to learn before I could develop one. What I didn’t know was that I
already had one, but it would take a few more years until I figured out what it
really was and why I feel most people have the entire concept backwards.
Rapid Growth and Expansion Phase
A: The Rapid Growth years really taught me a lot about business. While what I
read had a huge impact on the business, there were still many holes to be
filled. It seems everyone had the answers but nobody had the solutions. During
this time, I kept coming back to the USP question because it kept coming up in
all my reading. However, it really hit home when I hired a business
consulting firm to help teach me how to run a business. One of the very first
things I was asked to do was come up with my primary aim. I was asked why I was
in business. What was the deep reason I was doing what I was doing? Why was I
spending 80 hours per week working for zero pay? After about 30 days of thinking
on this one question, I came up with what I still believe today is my primary
aim for business and life:
"To Live, Learn and Pass on."
What this means is that I want to live my life and have my business enhance
it, not take away from it. I want to be there for others and have the time to
enjoy life. I want to learn and grow as a person from all perspectives. I feel
it is important to try and grow as a human each and every day to become better
at being the best I can in all roles of my life. I want to pass this on to
others and make a difference in people’s lives the way others have for me.
This statement, my primary aim, is what drives me. It is based on my core
values and is who I am and who I want to be. In my opinion this was the MOST
important business development process I ever did.
Once the aim was established, I was asked to move on to what my objective
was. What was going to separate EliteFTS from the rest? How would it be
different? What was my USP?
THERE IT WAS AGAIN!
Once again, I was being asked the greatest mystery question of all time. My
first reaction was to come up with some BS answer to get it over with, but then
I figured I would take some time and really get into the question. I spent hours
studying others in the same industry. I looked at how they were different from
one another. I studied the best businesses to see how they were different, and
then I looked at other outside businesses to see what they were doing and what
their USP was.
It did not take me very long to see that 99% of the ones who said they were
different were NOT. They were just a knock-off of their competitors, but had a
better slogan. I quickly realized that there are three main things you can
compete on: Price, Service and Quality. That’s it! I also discovered you can NOT
do all three and need to focus on one or two at the most. If a company says they
can do all three, then they are lying. You can't offer the best quality and
service and the lowest price regardless of what anyone says.
When I realized this and really looked at all the companies, I saw
the variants of these three competitive aspects, but could not see any one
company that really stood out as different. For example, if Company A and
Company B both offered the highest quality, their prices were in the same range
and their service was also great. What I did not see was how Company A was
better than Company B outside of the name of the product. Even after reading
their USP and seeing what they said the difference was, I still could not see
it.
This only made it even harder for me to come up with a USP, so I decided to
totally skip that part and HATED doing it because I felt like I was missing a
very important aspect of business. Seriously, I lost MANY nights of sleep over
this one.
PRE-RECESSION
A: You would think that after 10 years of trying to answer this question that
I would have figured it out by now. You would think I would be able to give you
our USP, right?
Well, you would be wrong. To this day I still can't tell you, but what I will
say is that I no longer care because sometimes how you define something is not
as important as getting it done.
This is how I have grown to see this. Everyone seems to want to be different,
but in the process of doing this, they end up being the same. When Company X
enters the marketplace, they feel they need to be different from the rest, so
the first thing they do is look at how they can do this. They look at what
Company A, B, C and D are doing and try to find ways to be different from them.
They are looking at how to be different from them by looking at what they do.
The total focus is on what the competition does or does not do well.
My question would be this: Why has Company X not looked at who THEY are and
what THEIR strengths are? Why are they not putting the focus on them?
This is what we have done at EliteFTS. I never found a USP because I was too
busy being who WE are. If the company is based on established values and then
driven by the staff’s strengths it will find its OWN voice, its own personality
and its own strength in the marketplace. Much like the DNA of an individual, a
company based on values, strength and personalities will become something that
can’t be duplicated. Others can try to copy it, but will always fail because
they are trying to find a Unique Sales Position based on what OTHERS are doing
instead of who they are.
Today: Post Recession
Just when I thought I had this figured out, we were hit with a recession.
Over the period of the past year every single aspect and system of the business
has changed.
The entire strategy and how we look at business had to change. Like many
others we had to dive into survival mode and change. Now we are working on a
growth strategy. Now after ALL this time, struggle, adversity, prosperity,
relationships, partners, volunteers and employees, I realize what the value
proposition is and has always been. I was looking WAY too hard to explain what’s
actually very simple…
We help people break personal records.
