In that context, of course, "I" means any potential customer. When you do it, it’s more than likely that your team will come up with fairly typical answers - answers like better service, better qualified temps and personnel, and so on.
As they come up with answers, write all the answers on a board, and then do something really interesting. Tell the team that you’re going to be really hard. You’re going to erase anything you’ve written down that one of your competitors would also say to a customer about their business - whether or not it’s true. Ask the team to tell you which attributes they want you to erase on that basis. In other words, ask them to imagine that you’d asked their competitors the same "What are the 10 reasons" question and erase answers they thought their competitors would have given to the same question. Not surprisingly, all the warm "touchy-feely" things will disappear. After all, everyone says they give great service, everyone says they have better qualified people, everyone says they have top quality products, etc.
If you’re really severe with the board eraser, you may have absolutely nothing left on the board. That means you have a problem. Your business is either not unique, or just as importantly, you haven’t been able to find a way to articulate your uniqueness. The point is, of course, that if you don’t have anything tangible or real that differentiates you, you have to find it.
Paul Dunn did an exercise a while ago in Perth with a personnel agency. It’s a fascinating story because like most companies, they had difficulty at first coming up with unique things. But, as they worked on it, they found they could build a USP (unique selling point). The company did have two tangible differences. They had a LIFETIME guarantee (yes, you read that right - a lifetime guarantee) on all permanent placements they made. And, they gave the client the first two hours of the temporary employee’s time free while they were familiarizing themselves with the client’s business. But, they needed to get more. And, by brainstorming, they found it. They decided that the temporaries the company sent out had to be the very best. They had to reflect the company’s values. They had to be different. Training was the answer there. Every temporary (even thought they might be skilled in their own particular area) got a special program on customer care through a special video created for the company. Remarkably, it’s a program that the temporaries gladly paid to participate in! That gave them another difference to communicate to potential customers.
Consider what might happen if you took the time to do the "What are the 10 reasons I should buy from you" exercise. It really is a fascinating one to do.
