If you don’t know why customers should choose to work with you over all of their other options, how in the world are they ever going to know? You need to know the answer to that and be able to articulate it, believe in it and live it. Here are six questions you need to answer and how to put those answers together to create your “value proposition.”
1. Who Is Your Customer?
You will be able to find your customers easier when you’ve defined what they look like, what they believe in, what values they share with you and how they behave. What adjectives do you use to describe your best customers? Open-minded? Fun-loving? Metrics-driven? Value-oriented? Price- savvy?
2. What Does Your Customer Need?
Does your customer need a complete concept to completion assistant? Do they need fresh ideas or are they simply looking for someone who can get them what they demand? Do they need lots of options? Do they need program expertise, help defining and measuring results? Do they need a lot of customer service, support and hand-holding? What descriptive nouns can you use to describe what they need? Great ideas? Accurate delivery? Sweet design?
3. What Do You Deliver?
What is it that you deliver for your customers? What can they expect to receive from you? How is it different from anything else they can find in the marketplace? Can you be more exciting and different than just saying you deliver good quality at a good price? Work at this one because it is important that you know what it is that you are going to be able to deliver to your customers every time.
4. How Do You Deliver What You Promised?
For example, if I promise that I deliver fresh, exciting ways for my clients to grow their business, I need to be able to say how I’m going to do that. It might be by being an award-winning creative who has worked on top national brands. It might be because you have more industry experience, or because you were a former buyer yourself.
5. How Is What You Do and How You Do It Different Than the Competition?
I know we’ve all been told to not bad-mouth the competition. That advice is sound. Don’t name a specific competitor, but do know how you are better than your competition. Many of us complain about certain online competitors and lament how they can beat us on price. Come on. Work harder than that. If you’re going to compete with the Internet, make yourself more valuable and more interesting than a website for goodness sakes. How are you better and how are you different? Is you competition stale? Does it care about product safety? Does it go the extra mile? Does it offer a real person at all times?
6. What Do You Offer That the Competition Just Can’t Touch?
Say it loud and say it proud. What makes you unique? What makes you the best and only choice for the type of customer who has the type of need that you can solve and amaze while doing it?
Now play a little game of fill in the blanks (kind of like a business version of Mad Libs).
For the _____ (answer to No. 1) customer needing _____ (answer to No. 2), my company delivers _____ (answer to No. 3), and does this by _____ (answer to No. 4). Unlike the competition, which _____ (answer to No. 5), I offer _____ (answer to No. 6).
There you have it. Your very own “value proposition.” Here’s how one might look:
For the value conscious, marketing-savvy customer needing sales promotions that get results, my company delivers the newest, trendiest and most buzz-worthy promotion ideas, and does this by staying current with new opportunities while being grounded in more than two decades of successful promotion planning. Unlike the competition, which rises and falls quickly and depends on me-too and washed up trends, I offer a fresh approach that generates not only buzz but creates results.
Now do your own. I would love to see yours.
