During a conversation with a business leader of a legal firm he admitted with much frustration that they had struggled to date to articulate their firm’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP). As a general high street legal firm, they had found it extremely difficult to differentiate themselves from other legal firms without resorting to exaggerating minute and inconsequential differences.

This challenge is faced by many service providers and may be indicative of firms adopting too narrow a view on their offerings. It is recognised that many legal firms offer broadly similar products and services with regard to their functional expertise. However, how such products and services are delivered provides significant scope for differentiation.   Furthermore, the diversity of customers that would benefit from the services and products that are similar in nature also provides scope for firms to differentiate themselves.

It seems to me that a USP is the meaningful and valued difference that a firm offers to its target customers relative to their alternatives. Defining a USP is possible but can be challenging as it necessitates a firm making clear strategic choices. Key assumptions to underpin a process of defining or redefining a USP are as follows:

  • Recognition that a clear and meaningful USP is relevant for a firm to achieve sustainable profitability;
  • Acceptance that a firm cannot serve all customers and the identification of target customer segments is critical for long term success.

Key considerations

The key question that a USP should seek to address for a firm is:

Why should my target customers choose our firm instead of the competition?

Some questions to explore and to inform the definition of USP include the following:

  • What types of customers are we best placed to serve?
  • What unique benefits does our firm offer to its target customers?
  • In what ways are we meaningfully different to our competitors?
  • In what ways are we similar to our competitors?
  • What unique problems do we solve for our customers?
  • What particular needs of our target customers do we address best?
  • What unique features of our firm are most relevant to our target customers?
  • What is the unique story about our firm that would resonate with the target customers?
  • Is our USP clearly and precisely aligned to the right customer and market segments?
  • What is meaningfully different about who we are a firm that is relevant to our target customers?
  • What is meaningfully different about what we do as a firm that is relevant to our target customers?
  • How is the way we operate meaningfully different and relevant to our target customers?
  • In what ways is why we do what we do valued and relevant to our target customers?
  • How is the way we deliver our services meaningfully different and relevant to our target customers?
  • How is the way we behave as a firm meaningfully different and relevant to our target customers?
  • In what ways are our deep core values meaningfully different and relevant to our target customers?
  • Which combination of our dimensions of difference (outlined below) can we offer well to our target customers?

Domains of Difference
Legal firms can broadly define their USP in three mains domains:

  1. Better:  A firm seeks to define its USP as offering a qualitatively better experience to its target customers.
  2. Faster: A firm seeks to define its USP as offering a quicker and faster experience to its target customers.
  3. Cheaper: A firm seeks to define its USP as offering a cheaper price to its target customers.

Although it is not impossible to seek to define a USP across the three domains, it is usually very challenging to define a USP across the three domains which is why it is common for legal firms to have a family of brands in order that they can more clearly tailor their value propositions to diverse target customers through a primary domain.

Dimensions of Difference

A firm’s USP could be a single meaningful unique factor that it offers to its target customers or it could be its ability to achieve synergy across a combination of common factors offered by competitors to deliver a total customer experience that is meaningfully different to its target customers (the total experience being greater than the sum of the individual common factors).

Some of the dimensions of difference that should be considered to inform the definition of a USP are as follows:

  • Customer segment
  • Customer characteristics/demographics
  • Customer behaviour
  • Geographic focus
  • Ways of working
  • Service delivery approach
  • Customer problems/Pain points
  • Complexity of customers’ problems
  • Range of services

Are USP’s forever?

A USP today is no guarantee that it would remain a USP tomorrow and the history of business highlights that the competitive advantage of a USP can be eroded in time due to imitation by competitors especially if the USP is not protected legally. However, if the USP of a firm is closely aligned to its culture, then it is more likely that the USP would be enduring and more resistant to imitation from competitors.

In any event an enduring USP should not encourage a legal firm to be complacent but rather provide the firm with sufficient runway to invest in regular reviews of its USP either in response to its proposed change of target customers or due to changes in the behaviours and needs of its target customers.