“Oh yeah? How do you do that?”
These are the magic words you want a prospect to ask following your value proposition.
I was recently attending a group session where several leaders were asked to articulate their companies value, and I was not surprised with how many struggled. Communicating value that matters to your customers and prospects is tricky, for four big reasons:
It requires a deep understanding of your customer
It requires us to get out of our own heads and put things in their language
It has to be valuable and unique ENOUGH to be intriguing
It has to roll off our tongues easily to be useful
All of those things sounds simple but they take thought, strategy and practice to get there.
Value props work best when they are concise, compelling, and in your customers language. It’s not a description of all that you do, and certainly doesn’t list off things like how long you’ve been in business, and - here’s the part that trips people up - it doesn’t even explain anything.
What you want the value proposition to do is simply intrigue someone enough to ask, “Oh yeah? How do you do that?” It’s a conversation starter. Then you follow it up with an example of how you deliver that value and you’re off to the races.
In our Targeted Prospecting program we develop value props that pass this quality check, then use them to craft entrance strategies. But really the uses are innumerable.
Imagine a world where your company had complete clarity on which types of customers they knock it out of the park for, where everyone knew what mattered to those companies AND how to communicate the VALUE you bring to those priorities. Imagine if every one of your employees was so confident in that they could easily participate in this kind of dialogue at a trade show, or in a coffee shop line.
Them: What do you do?
Me: I help companies get, keep, and grow their ideal clients so they can scale their business.
Them: Oh really? How do you do that? (ding, ding, ding!)
Me: It depends on what their specific needs, but often we work with people on building critical skills in their customer-facing talent, and evolving their sales strategy to meet their growth targets.
Them: How do I get some of that?