What We Do: What can you do for clients or what do you sell? Do you need any special accreditations, certificates or licences to do what you do? If so, mention them.

Our Staff: Who is your staff and what special qualifications, experience, awards etc has each staff member got that will help you provide services that are better than your competitors?

Our Equipment or Resources: If you are renting training venues, hiring out equipment, or rely on resources to earn a living, place some photos in your brochures. As some smart fellow said, 'A photo tells a thousand words'. Similarly if you have a special way of doing something, try to find evidence that supports it as being best way, most economical, safest or whatever. For example, if you clean carpets for a living you'll need to use cleaning materials that don't cause fade, are not noxious, don't harm animals or plants and so on. You get drift.

Where You Find Us: Where is your office, venue, factory, or whatever? How does your client find you? Do you need to include a map?

Contacting Us: Where can you be contacted by phone, fax, mobile telephone, letter, or email? Do you have an Internet site?

Client Testimonials: You can place a list of your clients here under heading 'Clients' or you can write to your clients and ask them to provide testimonial to quality, cost effectiveness, or whatever of your service. Several of your longer term clients may be willing to accept telephone calls from people who are considering buying your goods or services.

Finally

Once you have your Capability Statement, make sure you have sufficient copies to circulate and a plan to upgrade it periodically so it continues to represent exactly what you do.

Some organisations need capability statements that are situational ie, they have several documents, each of which addresses capability in a particular part or function of their firm.

Decide what is best for you and make sure you create and maintain your Capability Statement.

Copyright Robin Henry 2005

We were astonished. We had expected it would have just been dropped off and it would be up to us to unpack, set it up and work out how to use it. That was best service we had ever received - anywhere! And it got better.

About a week later firm telephoned us to make sure everything was working just fine and assured us that if we had any questions, problems etc, we could contact them at any time. We were again astonished. I wrote to manager and told him/her how pleased we were with our purchase and associated service.

Sadly, in ensuing 28 years we have had few other similar experiences.

If you sell goods or services and you want to stand out against your competitors and increase your profit, identify or create your USP and make it central to your organisational ethos.

Your USP need not be expensive, elaborate or resource intensive. The idea is to find a USP that is very low cost, but has high customer acceptance. What do you want as a customer? Do you want to be treated politely; as though your custom is really valued? Do you want a free pen? Would you like sales people to keep in touch?

Whatever you want, your customers want same. Find what you can do to make your customer service special, add value, or both in some small way. Then integrate it into your everyday operations and you're on your way.

If you choose a USP that includes keeping in touch eg, sending a reminder that a car is due for service, a dog due for immunisation, it will help you generate ongoing business and loyalty.

Don't forget that you will also need to update, change or refocus your USP. After a while it will become so common that people won't see it as being special ... reason they deal with you. Hopefully, by then they will be so accustomed to doing business with you, they will stay for good.

Now, once again, 'What's your USP?'

Copyright Robin Henry 2005