Surely its common sense that I need a value proposition, the quandary though is that what I really don’t want to tell everyone is that its understanding what really is the value that I deliver which holds me back from having a kick ass value proposition. I provide services which are valuable, how do I jazz that up? and, hand in hand with value proposition is the elevator pitch, again something that we all know we have to have but struggle so hard with.
What a load of hogwash!
At a recent conference where I was speaking, I attended the prior sessions and it was fascinating to hear conversations that all had a common thread, one person I think encapsulated the whole session… “I have had 14 goes at nailing this value proposition, I know how important it is and I’m going to go back and have my 15th go at getting it right.” You see, I believe that we are asking ourselves the wrong questions, which is how does my service add value and then how do I articulate that value. Stephen Covey is famous for stating we should “Begin with the End in Mind” and this is where outr mindset needs to be.
Of far more importance is understanding that if we apply our unique knowledge and insights and are able to solve the problems which are unique to the niche market we deliberately choose to specialise in, the conversations are real and around this value to begin with. They are natural conversations around our expertise and are in tune with our customers because we will develop empathy by focusing on them instead of us and our services that want to sell. In short, we will get better at having commercial conversations if wed focus on the customer first, the value proposition and the elevator pitch are not tools, they are conversations which our customer chats about with us simply because we are not trying to “sell to them”.
The funny thing is that the more we move away from focusing on our sales pitches, the more we actually end up selling………
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