Your value proposition is pivotal to your sales pitch. Essentially, it is the point in your pitch where you explain to someone why they should buy from you and convince them that you’re the best solution to meet their needs.
The best value propositions are short, sharp and to the point. This is because you don’t always have the benefit of having a conversation with someone directly. More often than not they’re finding you online in their own time. In this environment, you have less than a minute to hook that visitor on your site in to stay longer and convert them into a buyer.
Why do you need one?
Your value proposition is how you differentiate yourself within the marketplace. It’s what sets you apart from your competitors. It quickly and effortlessly highlights to your potential buyer why they should buy what you’re offering.
By creating a strong and compelling value proposition, you create a significant advantage for yourself. This is because you’re doing the work for your customer by helping them to quickly evaluate what you’re offering. Without one, they have to figure out for themselves whether you’re the best solution and you risk losing them to a competitor. Potentially one who has made it easier for the customer and rolled through some of their internal sales blocks.
What do you need to consider when building a value proposition?
The number one key to coming up with your value proposition is to consider all of the benefits your service or product offers your customer. After all, it is the benefits (or the value) that you are succinctly summarising in your proposition.
The best way to do this is to sit down and brainstorm all of the benefits – great and small. You may like to do this with your team as more brains in the think tank are often better here. When considering your benefits, think about it in terms of the challenges your customers face and how your product/service addresses them.
From there you want to connect your audience to those benefits. Often the best way to do this is through storytelling. For example, you may like to highlight examples of other customers who experienced benefits from using your product or service. This is where social proof and testimonials can really come in handy.
The 5 steps to creating your own unique value proposition
To create a unique and compelling value proposition, answer the following five questions.
- Who is your audience?
For the best value proposition, you have to understand exactly who you are talking to. Who is your ideal target market? What do they like/dislike? What drives their decision-making process? Get the clearest possible picture so you can accurately target your audience in a way that will compel them to respond. - What challenges or problems do you solve?
Put yourself into the position of your customer for this. Think about what it is that they are trying to achieve or the obstacles that are in their way. If you don’t know this already, make it your job to find out. Keep the language you use specific to your customer and avoid industry jargon. - How do you solve those challenges or problems?
What will change for your customer if they buy what you are offering? How would it improve their lives? This is where you really want to focus on the benefits of your product or service rather than the features of it. - What is unique about your business and approach?
What is it that sets you apart from your competitors? Are you environmentally conscious, efficient, more cost-effective or value add in ways that other businesses don’t? Your unique selling point plays into this aspect of your value proposition. - Do you have evidence that you deliver what you say you will?
In order for people to trust you, they need to feel confident that you will deliver what you promise. Social proof and testimonials can really help you here, so can numbers and figures. The intent here is to highlight return on investment and instil confidence in your potential buyer around the value you are claiming to provide.
