The Secret Of Glo’s Early Success

One of the factors responsible for the failure of most small businesses, is the inability to differentiate itself from other similar businesses.

When you are opening a business in an area where other similar businesses exist, you must have what is called, ” A Unique Value Proposition” or UVP for short.

Your UVP is the reason why customers should leave other existing businesses and patronize you.

For instance, when GLO entered the GSM market, MTN was already dominating, Econet was second and NITEL was the third player.

For GLO to break into the market, they needed a solid UVP that will coerce customers to get their GSM line, even if they already have MTN or other lines.

Thus Otunba Mike Adenuga, the brain behind GLO, decided to do what the other 3 earlier players refused to do. He launched GLO in August 2003 with “Per second billing” as its unique value proposition.

Prior to that time, all the 3 previous networks charged per minute. So even if you made a 1 second interrupted call, you will pay for a full minute.

With this Unique Value Proposition, Glo Mobile showed unprecedented growth through the sale of 600,000 SIM cards in the first ten days of operation.

It quickly overthrew NITEL and then ECONET, to become the 2nd largest network. MTN would have been dethroned, if they hadn’t reacted quickly and introduced “per second” billing by December of 2003 (Even though they earlier said that per second billing will not be possible for the next 10 years).

This is a clear demonstration of the power of a well planned and crafted Unique Value Proposition.
If you offer what every other person is offering, why should people switch to your business?