No matter if you are in marketing, sales, or an executive role that is responsible for both, it is always important to remember that the thing that drives results more quickly than anything else is providing your clients and prospects with an overwhelming value proposition.
One of the challenges that is too often the downfall of any successful strategic plan or marketing initiative is when value hasn’t been identified in a relevant and meaningful manner.
If we aren’t careful, pretty quickly, our value proposition becomes a list of random filler words like “likes,” “engagement,” and “connections.”
At the most basic, our value needs to be defined in terms that are relevant to an executive and buyer and that will offer the opportunity for that buyer to gain a noticeable improvement in their business’s performance.
These are things like making money, saving money, and using time more effectively.
Here are a couple of ways to translate your value into a meaningful value proposition:
1. Focus on outcomes:
In too many organizations and marketing departments and sales departments, etc., you find an almost knee jerk reaction for the team to talk about the activities that they do as the meaningful contribution to the team.
It is as if spending hours on social media with no measurable return is a good idea because some social media guru has told them that they have to “make plays on every site.”
You absolutely need to focus on the outcomes.
What do outcomes look like:
“We improved our client’s time to market by 10%.”
“We drove 12% in new revenue growth while growing profit margin 2%.”
2. Be specific to your buyer:
I’m sort of a generalist because what I do applies to pretty much any industry, so I don’t want to steer you in the wrong direction because even when you are a generalist, you still need to have specific buyers in mind and not just this thing called “universe.”
The best way to describe your buyer is to think about yourself in terms of the value that you provide.
For me, its revenue solutions…so that defines my conversations. There has to be a revenue component.
For you:
- It could be sales
- It could be IT infrastructure
- It could be strategy
3. Make sure your value is evolving:
Never become stagnant.
Your value proposition and value statements need to change to reflect the business climate you are a part of.
One of the fastest ways to fail consistently is to feel like your value proposition is set in stone.