What is your value proposition?
A well articulated value proposition is critical to your success. If what you offer is a service, you should be able to explain how you do what you do and how that separates you from your competition. If selling products or product development is your business, then you need to explain why your product is superior or perhaps unique and what benefits it presents to its intended users. Whether you are a technology company, a retailer, a gardener or a mechanic, you should be able to strongly communicate what differentiates you from your competition.
Understanding your target markets and your clients is central to developing your value proposition. You need to learn and understand the client’s general business challenges. What is the nature of their industry/sector? What are the governing market dynamics that are impacting their business? When will these governing market dynamics begin to impact their business?
You also need to learn and understand the client’s unique business challenges. Exactly what does this client do? Where are the bottlenecks in their organization? How can you help them drive efficiencies? What risks are they exposed to by the deployment or non-deployment of existing and emerging technologies? What are their unique and specific needs?
If you are a retailer or a gardener or a mechanic, these questions will be somewhat different. Regardless of the nature of your business, you and/or your sales team need to ask these types of questions and listen very carefully. By doing so, you will glean important information that will ultimately enable you to provide value through knowledge and expertise. Based on this information, you can refine your value proposition and collaterals to address these questions, highlighting your core competencies and clearly expressing the benefits of your products or services and their abilities to provide a solution today and into the future.
© Gil Namur, 2009
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