One day about three or four years ago, I gathered with our team members at the Coco's in Kakegawa. We were holding a meeting with a consultant to work out our management strategy.

The first thing the consultant asked us was this.

Consultant (hereafter "C"): "So, what is Merci's USP?"
*USP stands for Unique Sales Proposition — in other words, your strengths.

Odagiri (hereafter "O"): "U… U-S-P? …What's that? Fujiwara, do you know?"

Director Fujiwara (hereafter "F"): "Hmm… I wonder what it is?"

O: "Sakupon (= Sakura Suzuki), do you know?"

Sakura, new hire at the time (hereafter "S"): "I just joined, so I have no idea! Anyway, what IS a USP?"

O: "Well, that's fair enough… Hmm… Something like being rooted in the local community? Or seeing things from the customer's point of view?"

Consultant: "...Community-focused, customer-oriented... I see. So what exactly does that mean?"

Boss: "Well, it means valuing our local customers... Hmm, how about saying our staff have high-level skills? Right, Fujiwara-chan? Sakupon?"

Fujiwara: "Y-yes, that's right!"

Sakura: "I'm not sure, but I think so!!"

Consultant: "Okay, then what exactly does 'our staff have high-level skills' mean?"

Everyone: "We have no idea (sob)!!!"

Consultant: "...(Seriously?)..."

I have a confession to make.
Honestly, up until then I had never once seriously thought about "our company's strengths"!
And that's despite always asking clients, "What are your company's strengths?" in production meetings.

Can you sum up "our company's strengths" in a single phrase?

When you build a website, you absolutely must include your "strengths" and "commitments." Otherwise, visitors won't choose you.
That's why, in our interviews, the very first question we ask is, "What are your company's strengths?"
But honestly, not many company presidents can answer that in a single phrase. Myself included, back in the day.

On the other hand, some people talk at great length:
"Our XX is really particular about △△, blah blah, and just the other day so-and-so at ×× praised it to the skies!"
But when you ask, "I see. So what exactly does that mean?", very few can give a clear answer.

Even so, that won't get visitors to your website to choose your company. They might even leave without so much as looking at a second page.
That's because it's said that when people view a website, they decide within just 0.2 seconds of opening the page whether "this page is worth looking at (or not)."
So you need words that get the message across at a glance. You could call it a catchphrase.

How to put your company's strengths into words

So, do presidents who can't articulate "our company's strengths" really not know their own company? Of course not.
Then why can't they state their strengths? Simply because they know too much to put it into words.

If you run a small company, you surely know inside and out where your company is better than local competitors and where it falls short. As a result, you tend to think comparatively: "We're better than them in that area, but we lose out in this other area..." And in the end, you fall into the mindset that there's nothing where you're better than everyone else.

So what should you do?
The quickest approach is to set aside comparisons with competitors for a moment and think from the "customer's perspective"—especially the "customer's pain points."

Let's take someone struggling to lose weight. If you had failed at dieting again and again, you'd surely be thinking, "I don't want to fail anymore." In that case, a run-of-the-mill catchphrase like "A salon dedicated to dieting" probably wouldn't get a second glance.

What about remodeling or housing? These are high-priced purchases people make only a few times in their lives, so they're bound to be far more cautious.

"Can I build a home that fits my income?"
"Is the quality reliable?"
"Is the after-sales service solid?"
"How is the company doing financially? Will they go under?"
"What's the person in charge like?"

Even a quick brainstorm turns up plenty of these. It would be great to come up with a catchphrase that reaches all of these concerns, but that's not something that comes to mind easily. You'd probably end up with something utterly generic...

Something like "We'll make all your wishes come true."...

Incidentally, we consider "anything (everything)" to mean "nothing at all," and treat it as the number-one banned word within our company.

So, look for words that strongly reach just one of those concerns. That's the key point.
And then prepare "numbers" that prove it.
Adding numbers to a catchphrase dramatically boosts its persuasiveness.

"One sold every ○ seconds" — shows how much you're selling
"Repeat rate of ○○%" — emphasizes high customer satisfaction
"Number one in the ○○ rankings" — emphasizes popularity

These serve as "proof" that backs up your catchphrase. In many cases, they become the catchphrase themselves.
The examples above are very easy to understand, of course—if such figures were easy to come by, nobody would struggle. But even a small-scale angle works just fine.
Something like "○% satisfaction in our in-house survey" is perfectly fine.

Thinking of "strengths and proof" as a set makes it much easier to express things in clear language.
Why not try looking at it from that angle?