Specialisation & Your USM
Many practitioners try to be all things to all people, with a long list of problems they treat. Here's a different view from Dr Knight.
Specialisation & Your USM by Dr Bryan Knight
You’ve probably heard that you must have a USM -- Unique Sales Message.
(Otherwise known as UPS — Unique Selling Proposition.) Your USM is what distinguishes you from everyone else in your field. It answers the public’s major question:
“Why should I see you, rather than one of your competitors?”
Another way to look at this is: what do you have to offer that others don’t?
If there is nothing to distinguish you from other practitioners in the same profession, your practice will limp along, and very likely, die.
Here’s how to create your USM:
1. Choose a specialisation.
2. Make a list of adjectives which describe you and your practice.
3. Make a list of adjectives which describe the practices of others
offering similar services in your locality.
4. Cross off everything that appears on both lists.
5. From what’s left on your list, create a paragraph which sums up what your service is and why it’s different to every other practitioner.
Why you should specialize:
The main reason is that when you have a specialisation you have a focus for your marketing. A magnet to attract clients and an easy way for them to recommend you to others.
Who do you think the media are more likely to call upon about, e.g., violence in the workplace:
-- A psychologist whose publicity lists 24 problems ranging from anxiety to zoophobia that she deals with, or
-- A psychologist whose publicity is focused on how she helps victims and perpetrators of violence in the workplace?
So how do you select a specialisation?
Choose:
? a gender
? a problem
? an age group
As a nutritionist, for example, you might choose to work only with women [gender]
Or with eating disorders. [problem]
Or with seniors. [age]
Of course you could choose to either narrow your choice, or combine a couple together. You might, for instance, narrow your expertise to working only with women who suffer with eating disorders. [gender+problem]
Or your specialisation could, as an example, combine all three categories: working only with the nutritional needs of depressed women seniors. [age+gender+problem]
The reason to specialise is not to restrict you but to make it easier for you to become known.
For instance, I have promoted myself as a hypnotherapist. This provides one feature to distinguish me from the hundreds of other psychotherapists in Montreal.
(I often amplify this by explaining that I am a psychotherapist who uses hypnosis as one technique among many. Taking a step further I bill myself, with all due modesty, as “Canada’s foremost hypno-psychotherapist”).
Then I chose to focus on anxiety, phobias, panic attacks and stress.
Those are the issues I publicise as specialties. So I rarely work with children although I do help people who are depressed.
I don’t specialise in couples counselling but when it’s appropriate I do counsel a couple.
For instance: a man makes an appointment to find out how hypnotherapy could help him end his problem of premature ejaculation.
I suggest that, rather than hypnosis, let’s use a well-known behavioural therapy technique. It would probably resolve the problem quite quickly. Since the wife would be involved in using this technique I recommend they make a joint appointment so I can explain it to them together.
"Marketing Action Plan for Success in Private Practice" the ebook with the double-your-money back guarantee by Dr Bryan Knight Hypnosis Headquarters http://hypnosis.org.
