According to Google, consumers, on average, still have 64% of their holiday shopping left to complete. That is as of Sunday, December 6 anyway. If this information is accurate, you still have time to get a lot of holiday business.

The information comes from the Google/OTX Consumer Pulse Check survey. It also comes after record e-commerce sales reported for last week, and some of the biggest e-commerce days still to come.

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More Than a Slogan

The ubiquitous business slogan, or tagline, is familiar to everyone. From Nike’s “Just Do It.” to the classic “got milk?” of the California Milk Processor Board, we all carry these phrases around in our heads along with commercial jingles and corporate logos. But the USP, when the concept was originally developed back in the 1940s, was specifically intended to communicate a distinct and unique proposition to the consumer, a proposition so compelling that it can draw customers to your brand.

From the E-Myth perspective, the USP accomplishes this by communicating what it is about your business service or product that brings emotional gratification to the customers in your target market. The genius of the famous tagline, “got milk?” is that it speaks directly to the fact that consumers intensely disliked finding that they were out of milk. By leveraging that emotional reality, the ad agency launched a highly successful series of print and TV ads that impacted millions of consumers over the years.

But over the decades the usage and understanding of the USP has morphed somewhat. Purists in the marketing world lament that what passes for Unique Selling Propositions are often little more than clever or innocuous slogans.

Consider a Unique Selling Proposition for Bob’s Backyard Barbeques such as this: “We Build Barbeques.”  Aside from stating the obvious, the phrase says nothing that stirs the emotions or speaks to any need for gratification. And it certainly isn’t communicating anything unique in its proposition. On the other hand, Bob might come up with a USP that reads: “We Build Backyard Escapes” or “Exotic Vacations At Home.” The imagery and emotional appeal is vastly different and the power of the USP has been harnessed more effectively.

Tapping the Unconscious Mind of Your Customer

The foundation for your USP must come from a real understanding of your customer. In our Mastery Impact! coaching programs we work through the Marketing process with our clients to make sure that before a USP is developed, there's a solid understanding of the target market. Here are a couple of ways we suggest you develop that understanding..

• Think like your customer. Step outside of your day-to-day role as the owner and think about what your customers really want from your product or service. What is it that makes them come back again and again, instead of going to your competition? It might be the quality or convenience. Perhaps it is your friendliness, exceptional customer service, or reliability. Remember that people do not patronize your business solely for price alone. Hopefully there are qualities that attract and appeal to your customer base.
• Learn what motivates your customer’s buying decisions. You need to know what drives and motivates your customers. Having some knowledge of the demographics of your target market is essential, but just as importantly, you must learn how they tend to derive gratification in life and what their purchase preferences are. People buy products and services primarily based on their desires, not on their needs. Knowing these desires and motivations will help inform your true unique selling proposition.
• Know the real reasons customers come to you instead of your competition. How do you do that? Ask your best source of information: your customers. This can be done in a wide variety of ways from face-to-face conversations to surveys to focus groups. Every business lends itself to certain methods of deriving this information, but the fundamental truth is that you can never know too much about your customers!

The last step here is to be as objective as possible in determining what features of your business stand out as something that sets you apart from the pack. What can you highlight that will move prospective customers to patronize your business? And how can you position everything you do in your business to embody that USP?

Bringing Your Unique Selling Proposition to Life

So what should an effective USP look like? There are several schools of thought on this topic and much has changed since the concept of the Unique Selling Proposition was first developed back in the 1940s. However, most successful USPs share some common characteristics.

The real power of your USP comes from its connection to the unconscious mind. Once you have dedicated some careful thought to understanding the collective minds of your target market, you can then concentrate that understanding into how you need to position your business. The way to craft a powerful USP is to make sure it ties into the most emotionally stimulating elements of your customers’ experience with your business. So how do you capture this in a short phrase that touches on emotional gratification promised by your product or service? By following these seven guidelines:

1. Make it short – a phrase, not a sentence.
2. Keep it vague enough to leave room for the imagination of your reader.
3. Try to convey a positive feeling.
4. Give it impact and emotion.
5. Avoid defining your business as a commodity.
6. Focus on the promise of emotional gratification – the result or benefit – not the work or features you offer.
7. Make it consistent with the general perception of your business and what you have learned of your customer’s gratification mode and purchase preferences.

Don’t feel that you have to be “married” to your initial efforts. Businesses often develop new USPs as they grow and evolve. And the more you learn about your customers and what constitutes your promise of emotional gratification, the clearer your understanding of what an effective Unique Selling Proposition will be. Ultimately, the real acid test is to ask yourself, “What emotion am I selling?”

Share Your Story

What's your USP? Got one you're proud of? Post a comment and share it with the E-Myth Community.

When the economy is slow and unemployment rates are high, it's easy to think your employees will happily stay put in their current jobs. But that's a dangerous assumption. Research shows that voluntary turnover rates increase as consumer confidence builds. This means, as a manager, you need to figure out ways to retain your top performers, even if your company is still in a slump.

There is no doubt that as a manager the pressure is on. As Jay Conger, the Henry Kravis Research Professor of Leadership Studies at Claremont McKenna College and author of The Practice of Leadership: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders, points out, "The largest predictor of whether someone will stay with a company is their satisfaction with their immediate boss." Your employees are likely looking to you for inspiration and guidance during these tough times, and you may have little, or nothing, to offer them in terms of advancement or compensation. Many companies have reduced or stopped giving bonuses or merit increases until the economy shows greater signs of recovery. Fortunately, as a manager, you have many other levers available to you that can motivate your stars and keep them happy. Relying on those other levers may cost you and your company nothing, but often they have huge value to your stars.

What the Experts Say

As a manager, your role is to figure out which of those benefits matter most to your people. As Conger points out, "A lot of managers don't realize what they have at hand." Making use of low-cost levers is a great way to show your stars that you appreciate them, value their work, and are invested in their careers. Boris Groysberg, an Associate Professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School and co-author of "Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model" suggests you "find the levers where the value to the individual is greater than the cost to the company." Here are some of the tools you might rely on when budgets are tight.

1. Praise for good work. This is one of the most inexpensive, and unfortunately, underused levers available to managers. Conger says, "There is a praise deficit in almost all companies." Yet praise can go a long way in demonstrating to your top performers how much you value them. Be sure to express gratitude for work that is above and beyond normal standards. Be specific and be sure that your praise is tied to a legitimate accomplishment.

2. Challenging projects and assignments. To keep your top performer engaged, provide her with the opportunity to work on a new project or assignment that builds her skills and gives her a chance to shine. This might be a team project that brings your star together with other stars from different departments or functions; or this might be a solo project that demonstrates your confidence in her ability.

When thinking of projects that you might assign, ask yourself which of your projects are most interesting and engaging to you and think about how you might delegate some of them. Select a tangible project that you know your star can succeed with. Particularly good projects are those that involve interaction with important clients or exposure to the senior most people in the organization, such as C-level executives or board members. Consider a project that relates to the current company situation. For example, you could ask your star to identify new revenue sources or explore how your company can compete is a less expensive product market.

Be careful when assigning these projects. No one wants to hear that in lieu of a bonus they are receiving more work. Ensure she understands that the assignment is a vote of confidence and an opportunity for her to build additional skills, not a way to overburden her.

3. Development opportunities. Many managers neglect to use this lever because learning and development budgets are being cut. However, there are many inexpensive or free ways to develop skills. The challenging assignment discussed above is one of them; you can even choose an assignment with a particular development opportunity in mind. You can also find your star a mentor that is more senior in the organization and perhaps shares her career interests or a similar background. If your company retains coaches for senior executives, consider offering your star a few coaching sessions.

You can also contribute to the development of others by asking your star to teach a skill that she is particularly good at. If she is known for closing tough deals with top clients, ask her to design and lead a negotiation session for other sales people. This will allow her to serve as a role model while deepening her expertise in the area.

4. Non-monetary perks. There are also a whole host of perks that cost little or nothing for you to provide, such as flexibility, better work/life balance, or more autonomy. "Companies tend to become more controlling in tough times," says Conger, and "it's important to counter that tendency." Ask your stars what matters most to them. If your star has a young family, find ways to let her work from home. If she wants to take a class at a local college, give her time off to do so. More often than not Groysberg says providing "these perks leads to the right set of behaviors."

Manage Anxieties and Frustration
When bonuses are cut or salaries frozen, it is inevitable that some top performers will become frustrated and anxious over their future with your organization. Your role as a manager is to respond to these frustrations. When faced with a discouraged star, Conger suggests using yourself as a model. "Ask yourself why you're staying with the company," he says and share your reasons with your star. If possible, create more of those types of opportunities for your star.

Over-Communicate
Open communication with your stars is critical. In fact, in tough times, managers should over-communicate to help alleviate fear and anxiety. Be transparent about the company situation and outlook for the future. Groysberg says, "The more you share information, the more buy-in you have." But be careful not to make promises you can't keep. As Conger says, "People have very durable memories." Be specific and explicit about why the star is needed at the organization. "Describe the pathway to the future in a realistic way and be candid about the challenges ahead," says Conger.

Culture Matters More than Ever
A strong culture is instrumental in retaining stars. Groysberg says that companies should focus on "building a strong culture versus a free agent nation" so that top performers are compelled to stay especially when the company is struggling. SAS Institute, a privately-held software company headquartered in Cary, North Caroline, has long had a commitment to retention and employee motivation. As Jenn Mann, Vice President of Human Resources at SAS Insitute says, "It's core to who we are in good times and bad times." The company provides benefits and programs that reduce stress and engage employees to focus on work. These include everything from an onsite medical facility with little to no wait times, to a 58,000 square-foot fitness center, to ensuring that work content is interesting and challenging. SAS Institute's senior executives set the example in this culture, and they communicate openly with all employees. This helps "eliminate the fear factor," according to Mann. Earlier this year, the CEO explained that this would undoubtedly be a year of uncharted territory — 40% of company revenues was from the financial services industry — but that the company was committed to not doing layoffs. A commitment they have been able to see through. Mann credits this culture of retention and communication with the company's very low voluntary turnover rate — it has remained at under 5% even when SAS wasn't able to provide merit increases this year.

As a manager, you can't control a company culture, especially at a large company. However, your actions and interactions with your top performers contribute to that culture. Make suggestions to upper management about new policies that will contribute to retention and will make your job of keeping stars easier.

Principles to Remember

Do:

• Find out what benefits matter most to your employees
• Communicate more than you think you need to
• Be realistic about people's anxieties and frustrations

Don't:

• Forget that satisfaction with an immediate boss factors heavily into people's decisions to stay with a company
• Assume that a bad economy guarantees that your star employees won't leave
• Think that money is your only tool to motivate your employees

Case Study #1: Using Flexibility to Retain Your Stars
Kyle Ewalt, the New York Office Manager at the management consulting firm, Katzenbach Partners, was a star employee. According to Shanti Nayak, Katzenbach's Director of People, Kyle outperformed anyone who had filled his role previously. He was hard-working, detail-oriented and had a unique ability to creatively solve problems. When Katzenbach was acquired by Booz & Company in the spring of 2009, it was clear most of the redundancies would come from the functional side. Kyle's job was in jeopardy, especially because there was not a similar role at Booz & Company that he could easily transition to. Yet, the leadership team at Katzenbach, including Shanti, CFO Amrita Bhandari and Managing Partner Niko Canner, knew they didn't want to lose Kyle. They sat Kyle down and asked, "What matters most to you right now?" He said that he loved his job but that at this point in his life, he wanted more flexibility to work on his music career. With this information in hand, Amrita worked with the New York office manager at Booz & Company to look critically at the role Kyle was playing and what was needed in the New York office. They were able to shape a flexible role that could be filled in three days a week and involved event planning, culture building, community advocacy, and onboarding. This was a winning situation for everyone involved: Kyle was happy with his new role and his increased flexibility while Booz & Company was able to retain a star performer and realize the cost savings from Kyle going part-time.

Case Study #2: Employing Your Stars to Teach Others
Geoff Bartakovics, the Founding CEO of Tasting Table — a free daily email that offers the inside scoop on restaurants, bars, and all things food — knows well the challenge of rewarding stars without traditional financial incentives. As a start-up (Geoff started the company in October of 2008), the company doesn't have the same financial rewards as larger companies and Geoff has had to rely on other types of rewards to attract and retain talent. One of the key rewards is the opportunity to do exciting work and be part of a fast-growing company. "It's easy for everyone here to see how their daily efforts are contributing to creating a successful organization," Geoff said. The company doesn't have an HR department (that would be Geoff) or a formal review process. Instead, Geoff does rolling reviews based on the hire date of his 12 employees. He ends each review by asking two questions:

1. What are you going to do to get Tasting Table to the next level?
2. How can Tasting Table contribute to your skill set and career plans?

For Geoff, the best moments are when the answers to those questions overlap. Heather, Tasting Table's Chicago editor, joined the start-up from an industry publication. Soon after she joined, the company was on a team call. Geoff was discussing their need to better understand search engine optimization (SEO), something that will be extremely useful to the company, particularly as it scales. Heather mentioned that she had expertise in the area. Geoff asked Heather to take ownership over the company's approach to SEO. He asked her to hone her skills and knowledge so that she will be in a position to train others within Tasting Table. In 2010, the company is expanding their free daily email to 5 more cities. Heather will be responsible for on-boarding the 5 new editors and providing them with SEO training.

The conversation at the Copenhagen climate conference is all about policy. But regulation won't stop global warming by itself. Nor will simply spending money on clean technologies. In the US, President Obama has earmarked a half billion dollars of initial funding for a breathtaking array of renewable technologies. This looks like bold action, but it isn't nearly bold enough. We need to be thinking on a far, far grander scale. With its financial and intellectual resources, the U.S. needs to lead this charge. But instead of backing individual technologies, the country should build a whole city of technologies.

What if we were to go into an area of our country that's seriously in need of reinvention — the Midwest — and build a city that would offer a living, breathing opportunity to create an entire clean-tech infrastructure? That's not nearly as utopian as it sounds. Here's why.

Moving from an oil-based economy to one fueled by sustainable, clean power requires more than a technology shift. It requires an infrastructure shift — a concept we explored in a recent Harvard Business Review article. Technologies don't replace technologies — systems replace systems. Fossil-fuel powered transport isn't a technology; it's a system comprising countless interconnected businesses (and business models), markets, government policies, and, yes, technologies. Replacing gas-powered cars with electric ones isn't a matter of simply swapping in new engines. It requires building the entire system that will make electric transport economically viable. Entrepreneur Shai Agassi is, at this very moment, building a comprehensive electric-vehicle infrastructure in Israel that encompasses not just the cars but the charging stations and cutting-edge power management grids and software such an infrastructure requires — a system.

Back to the green city. In the United Arab Emirates, the government of Abu Dhabi is building a clean-tech system of its own: Masdar. It's a city entirely powered by sustainable technologies, and it's their effort to create the Silicon Valley of clean tech. Masdar is being built on government-donated land, bolstered by business-friendly tax incentives and buoyed by $15 billion in government funds. It is slated to complete its first neighborhood by year's end, which will be anchored by a clean tech-focused university that just launched its inaugural class. The first commercial tenants are set to arrive in 2012; General Electric has already signed up.

In the scheme of things, $15 billion isn't an outrageous amount for a government to pony up to launch what figures to be one of the primary industries of the 21st century. Indeed, the Obama administration has pledged more than $100 billion to clean tech efforts; China, which is also making its own forays into eco-cities, is spending $200 billion; and the G20 industrialized nations have pledged upwards of a combined $400 billion.

The U.S. should take a small chunk that $100 billion and apply it to a Masdar-like
effort of its own. Imagine what a focused, coordinated effort among the government, private sector, and academic institutions could do. Rather than build from scratch, the government could use this grand-scale opportunity to revive a declining industrial city. What if the U.S. set up a smaller version of Masdar in the Midwest, say within Detroit, with the aim of creating its own Silicon Valley of clean tech?

A Midwest Masdar would go far beyond government funding of particular technologies. It would, for example, encompass construction of a sustainable sub-city replete with fully integrated clean-tech transportation, waste disposal, and energy production systems. It would involve government and private-sector support of university research (at, say, the University of Michigan), and corresponding faculty and student involvement in the implementation of new systems. It would entail government support for participating companies in the effort via land grants and tax breaks. And it would allow for the incubation of a wide array of new technologies and business models in real-world settings.

We're not suggesting this as the silver bullet of the clean tech revolution. But we are arguing that targeting some of the already-earmarked funds to a systemic approach would be smarter than devoting the entire amount to a thousand scattershot, uncoordinated projects. The lessons from such an integrated effort would hasten what will surely be a complicated transition to an as-yet-uncertain future. It's just the sort of progress the U.S. needs to revive the rust belt, catch and surpass international competitors in the next great industrial arms race, and lead the world toward a sustainable future.

Mark W. Johnson is the chairman and co-founder of Innosight. Josh Suskewicz is a senior consultant at Innosight.

Earlier this year, Gary Wolf wrote a great article in Wired magazine about Craigslist, the world's dominant classified ad site. Wolf cites astonishing statistics:

It's the most popular site in the US for dating, jobs, and apartments.

It gets more traffic than the job sites Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs combined.

It also gets more traffic than either eBay or Amazon.com despite the fact that eBay employs more than 16,000 people, Amazon.com more than 20,000, while Craigslist employs — ready? — 30.

One estimate puts Craigslist's 2009 revenue at about $100 million, yet the site only charges a paltry $25 to $75 for help wanted posts in select cities, and $10 for apartments listed by real estate pros in New York, plus some similarly small charges for adult services.

Every month, it attracts 47 million unique visitors, or about 1/5 of the U.S.'s adult population.

Ask a B-school student how the company has achieved such astonishing scale and growth, and he's likely to talk about network effects and winner-take-all dynamics, two phenomena that underpin the success of so many Internet companies. But cl (as many users call it) doesn't really reflect these phenomena on any global scale. All listings and all searches are local, such that when I use the Boston section of the site it's irrelevant to me how many users there are in San Francisco (or anywhere else). In fact, cl has actively worked to thwart programmers who have tried to build third-party services for global search.

What's more, when the company launched the Boston site, it did so with no fanfare, publicity, or recognizable marketing. Instead, as Wolf writes, "Sometimes a new site grows very slowly for a long time. But eventually listings hit a certain volume, after which the site becomes so familiar and essential that it is more or less taken for granted by everybody except the distressed publishers of local newspapers."

And why do users start going to each new cl city/site? It's sure not because of the slick look, elegant user interface, or flawless user experience. Wolf writes that craigslist has "... a design straight from the earliest days of the Web, [where] miscellaneous posts compete for attention on page after page of blue links, undifferentiated by tags or ratings or even usernames...Think of any Web feature that has become popular in the past 10 years: Chances are craigslist has considered it and rejected it...it scorns advertising, refuses investment, ignores design, and does not innovate."

So how on Earth does cl maintain its ridiculous popularity and growth? Very simply, because it works. It lets users initiate and advance a transaction with an absolute minimum of time, expense, hassle, rules, or oversight. And many times, this is exactly what we want.

Consider my behavior in these two scenarios. Scenario A: I'm having my motorcycle shipped a fair distance, and wanted to be sure that the carrier had a good reputation. So I used uship, and went through the hassle of setting up an account, giving myself a username, posting a description and picture of my bike, etc. I selected the winning bid after reviewing carriers' feedback scores and comments.

Scenario B: I had a TV I wanted to get out of my house. I didn't care at all about who came to pick it up, I just wanted it gone. So I put up a cl post, emailed the first guy that responded to it, and was TV-free after an hour. I couldn't have cared less about whether the site I used had the latest-and-greatest design elements or social features. I didn't want to participate in a community, give or receive feedback, or be impressed by any user interface guru. I just wanted one less piece of equipment in my house, and some guy wanted one more.

Craigslist gave us both what we wanted. Every time I use it I'm reminded of wiki inventor Ward Cunningham's fantastic question: "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?"

CL CEO Jim Buckmaster understands that this is the right question to guide his company "I hear this all the time," he says. "You guys are so primitive, you are like cavemen. Don't you have any sense of aesthetic? But the people I hear it from are invariably working for firms that want the job of redoing the site. In all the complaints and requests we get from users, this is never one of them. Time spent on the site, the number of people who post — we're the leader. It could be we're doing one or two things right."

Hear, hear. And in addition to radically simple site design, one of the other things they're doing right is listening to their customers. It seems they don't really have an alternative. The company's managers and technical staff (who are one and the same group) interact directly and continuously with the site's end users — the people in a city who have something or want something. And as Wolf writes "craigslist's users are not asking for such changes" as better search, a revamped design, or other snazzy features.

What generalizable insights come out of Craigslist's example? Keep asking Cunningham's question, and keep it simple. Listen as directly as possible to the people who use your online properties (Intranets, public web sites, eCommerce sites, etc.) and prioritize their feedback way above that of opiners and designers. Put in the minimum amount of structure -- workflow, navigation aids, hurdles, safeguards, etc.-- required for a positive user experience. And until there's evidence that it's broke, resist the temptation to fix it.

What do you think? What lessons do you take away from Craigslist's runaway success? Leave a comment, please, and let me know.