Why nailing your value proposition could be the most important thing you do this year

Speed-read: Last week I ran a workshop outside London for Sean, the CEO of a global equity fund, and his team. In one day we nailed the fund’s value proposition (their distinctive offer of value to their market), created a 60-second elevator pitch and sharpened the CEO’s signature presentation. 

Read on to find out how we did it. 

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I opened the workshop — as I always do — by getting Sean and his team to identify their ideal client. Not an abstract or theoretical client, but a real, flesh-and-blood person. He’s called Joe and he’s a wealth manager who manages a fund of funds, ie a portfolio of funds, on behalf of several clients. 

We looked at Joe’s pain points. What's he most worried about? ‘What’ as the cliché has it, ‘keeps him awake at night?’. Joe’s main fear is a currency or market crash and his clients suffering a permanent loss of capital.

That was our stake in the ground. 

Why your client’s pain matters

A value proposition typically has seven components, all of which begin with the letter ‘P’, eg People, Place, Product (or service), Promise, Price. But the one ‘P’ that typically gets ignored is Pain. Business owners/team leaders are so obsessed with their own offering/solution that that’s where they want to go straightaway; the desire to sell our own stuff exerts a huge gravitational pull on us. Almost every form of client-facing communication I see suffers from this.

It’s an epidemic of self-centredness, which presents as ‘we’-ing all over the reader. You know the style: 

‘We are a full service agency with 15 offices around the world employing over 5000 staff. We pride ourselves on our passionate commitment to client service and performance excellence, having grown last year by 13% etc etc etc….’

Where are the magic words ‘you’ and ‘your’? Nowhere to be found.

Like anyone self-absorbed, talking more about yourself than the client turns them off. The message you’re giving them is ‘We’re more important than you’. Hardly a winning strategy. 

Empathising with their pain is the single best way of grabbing their attention. By tuning into their internal conversation about that pain, problem or challenge, you’re getting on their wavelength; you’re meeting them where their attention is and grabbing it. Consciously or subconsciously, they say to themselves ‘These people get me. I’ll listen to what they have to say.’ 

That’s why I always begin with Pain. 

Only when you’ve convinced them that you understand their pain will they give you permission (in their own head) to talk about yourself and the service you offer. It’s permission-based selling. 

That gives you leave to explain how what you do alleviates or removes their pain, ie how your proposed solution matches their pain. That’s what I call your ‘soundbite’, the essence of whom you serve and how you serve them. The rest of your value proposition and elevator pitch is explaining more about your strategy and your credentials, ie what gives you the right to offer your service. 

Your client’s pain is the launchpad for your proposal, offer or solution. If you don’t understand their pain, your solution won’t make sense to them. End of. 

Do things in the right order

By lunchtime yesterday, we'd nailed both the value proposition and broken the back of the elevator pitch.  Your elevator pitch is always based on the value proposition, not the other way around. You can’t craft a compelling elevator pitch without first nailing your value proposition.

Blessed with the clarity of the value proposition, we were able to look more critically at the CEO's signature presentation (and his weekly newsletter). The clarity shone light on the dead wood in the presentation, paring the content back to what was critical, re-structuring it to tell a simpler, more compelling story and echoing some of the language in the value proposition. 

The result? A sharper presentation. 

In an hour we’d moved from 37 clunky slides that took an hour to present, to 25 simpler, more graphically powerful slides that Sean could pitch in 30 minutes. Only time will tell, but I suspect it’s going to be easier for Sean to book 30-minute meetings with prospects than 60-minute ones.

What were the outcomes of the day?

I’ve mentioned the main outputs or deliverables of the workshop. But what were the results or outcomes for the people involved? What changed for them, in terms of feelings or mindset?

Sean and his team told me that they felt clearer, calmer and more confident about their value proposition. Thanks to that shift, they were more energised about it and the prospect of sharing it with the world. Something inside them had shifted. 

I'm looking forward to seeing their business go from strength to strength this year.

The bottom-line

In my 25-year working experience I can count on the fingers of one hand — excluding my own clients, of course! — the organisations and teams that have nailed their value proposition and elevator pitch. In our hypercompetitive, globalised world, businesses that haven’t identified their distinctive offer of value to a specific market and articulated it in a clear, concise, compelling way are at a huge disadvantage. Though SMEs are especially guilty of this, it’s prevalent in professional services, too. 

That’s what I believe. But what do you think? I’d love to hear your view.