Getting the Value Proposition right is key if you want people hooked on your message, and ready to work with you. Using this guide you can craft your client-attracting message and leverage it throughout your sales outreach. But first,
Have you found yourself wondering what really is a value proposition?
It’s traditionally a statement that summarises why a customer would choose your product or service.
It’s a way to communicate the benefits on offer to prospective clients if they choose to do business with you, and every value proposition must address a client’s problems.
It should make a clear case for your company as the problem-solver.
This will elevate you above the rest.
A great value proposition can highlight what makes you different from competitors, while simultaneously focusing on how customers can define your value. Likewise, conversations around brand strategy and taglines should stem from a value proposition, but they aren’t one and the same.
But you might be wondering…
Why bother learning how to write a value proposition? And why master it?
You have to think of it as an investment or as a foundation of a house.
You might not see the foundation, but everything you do see — and the long-term safety and security of your home — rest on it having a strong place to start from.
Without it, you can’t embark on the roadmap to success.
But how do you find the value proposition that’s going to resonate with your audience?
Often it’s a case of trial and error and continued testing to see what works.
It’s important to remember that when it comes to crafting your value proposition it can help to be intentional and really clarify the ways you want to go forward with your company.
It can be easy to overdo it on the voice front, which circles back to the importance of clarity. Rather than involving multiple people, it can help to start with a smaller group that can set aside the time to hone a few compelling options.
Workshopping these can prove really beneficial and helps you solidify the value proposition you want to share. When you’ve found what works for you it can become far easier to create webinars around it, as these are another great opportunity to connect with audience members and share why you’re the obvious choice for them.
The mapping to success
When you look to write out the benefits of your product it can help to imagine how it would increase pleasure or decrease pain for the person using it. Identifying these aspects means that you can approach the features and the experience in the same way. Ultimately you have to ask yourself how do the features make the customer’s life better?
And how does the product experience make a customer feel?
Before diving into the customer’s emotional drivers or wants, their needs or rational motivators, and their undesired outcomes or fears. These are the driving factors behind understanding why your consumer makes purchases and why they’ll buy into your company.
You want to try to understand whether a product or service is going to affect a buyer’s perceived likelihood of failure, their anxiety, or their reputation at work. You can use the roadmap attached as a great starting point for helping to articulate the ways your company gives the customer value within this context.
Know your audience
So you feel ready to tackle those initial stages but what’s next?
It’s all about understanding who you are going to serve and what needs you are going to meet for them. To ensure you create an integrated and cohesive value proposition it can prove useful to look at the three big questions:
- Which customers are you hoping to serve?
- What needs are going to be met?
- What relative price will provide acceptable value for customers and acceptable profitability for the customer?
This is all dependent on your specific service and product, which is why it might make sense to start with the first or second questions listed. They can form the basis of knowing your audience and get you that one step closer to a succinct value proposition.
Another key aspect to knowing your audience is being able to write your value proposition in a way that your customers would write it.
There will be a big gap between what you say and what they hear, which is why you should use their voice to ensure it’s you that cuts through the noise and gets their attention.
That’s why it’s imperative to get that tone right so that when you showcase your value proposition it’s offering the best experience, product and service possible.
This is why hyping up the benefits you can provide is crucial.
But what are the benefits?
No one knows your company better than you, which should make it easy to emphasise the benefits you can offer.
It can also prove useful to ask your team members to complete an exercise listing how you ‘help X do Y by doing Z’ separately before comparing notes. The differing answers can help to offer a new perspective and yield new insights into each person’s priorities.
Final thoughts…
Now you have a deeper understanding of what a value proposition is and how to master it you’re ready to start testing each stage. It’s important to remember to continue altering and evolving your approach as your customers and markets change too.
Rather than make assumptions about your community, based on their past needs and buying behaviours, it can help to create feedback loops so you’re always in the know and moving forward.
By listening to customers in real-time, you are setting your company up to continue evolving its value proposition and ultimately meet the needs of your community as it grows.
For information on how to use these tried and tested approaches and more, why not book one of our live training calls?