Understanding a customer’s requirements and delivering to them is the foundation of any business – value proposition does just that! A fantastic value proposition can significantly improve your chances of generating more leads and profits. Looking at a business from the customer’s perspective is the key to writing an effective value proposition. Let’s look at how we can do that.
What is a value proposition?
Every customer’s first thought before they dive into business with an organization is “why?”. Now, you know the value of your brand, however, conveying the same and convincing your potential customers is the cornerstone of answering their “why?”. A value proposition is identifying how the benefits your organization has to offer resonates with the customer’s requirement.
4 Steps to follow
Crafting an effective value proposition may seem like a formidable task, fortunately, it’s easier than that. Let’s find out how.
The value proposition Canvas:
It is the nucleus of designing an efficient value proposition. The value proposition canvas is a tool that makes sure that the products and services of an organization revolve around its customer requirements.There are two sides to the value proposition canvas
a) Customer profile: To know the customer’s requirement is one thing but to understand it from their perspective is what gives the business an upper hand. Building a sturdy customer profile starts with customer obsession. Understanding the customer needs, the advantages, and the challenges – before, after, and while getting a job done aids with formulating the customer profile.
b) Value Map: After understanding customer requirements, it’s crucial to promote what your brand has to offer. A value map exhibits business’ products and services that outline your value proposition and how they accentuate customer’s benefits while shriveling their fears and challenges.
c) Fit: The whole idea of creating a value proposition is to make sure that at least most of your brand’s objectives furnish the customer’s necessities while ensuring you create gains and alleviate pains. A brand achieves fit when its product and services are validated by its customers.
Design:
Focusing on pacifying customer’s inconveniences and augmenting their gains is the centrepiece of designing a productive value proposition. The design process calls for a complete analysis of the customer profile. Deriving essential questions from the customer profile is the bedrock of designing a wholesome value proposition.
Test:
Every design prototype must go through a testing phase. The testing process is what makes a value proposition robust. Tackling uncertainties and improvising the value proposition demands step by step testing and experimenting with the hypotheses. The drawbacks that are observed during the testing are rectified and a new design is proposed. The design-testing process is more iterative rather than sequential and every iteration needs to be progressive.
Evolve:
Now that we’ve figured out the “why” and “how” of creating a value proposition, we need to also understand that every value proposition and business model canvas can accommodate organizational advancement. Remembering that the development of a business that is driven by a value proposition ensures that your brand revolves around your customers.
Emphasize on What you Give, Don’t Focus on What you Get in the Value Proposition
When we look closely at the value proposition from a B2B perspective we realize that they aren’t all that different when compared to consumer decisions. In today’s world, B2B offerings have become commoditized and eventually the subjective motive of the client is taken into consideration which in most cases is the same as that of a consumer. To prove this theory, a study was conducted on what factors mattered the most while engaging in a B2B encounter – there were 40 fundamental “elements of value” which could be categorized into table stakes, functional, ease of doing business, individual, and inspirational. Applying the pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (described in 1943) to these categories, we notice that the objective factors take the base of the pyramid and as the level rises the elements get subjective.
Surpassing at more than one element will always set your brand apart from the rest in the competition – it’s the direct derivative of customer loyalty because your brand can meet most of the customer’s needs.
As a brand, your ability to customize your value proposition according to the customer gives away the flexibility of your provision to customers from different realms and this comes with understanding your customer.
Talking about understanding your customer, we need to emphasize how important it is to know what captivates the customer and what irks them. Sometimes, we are too quick to draw conclusions and presume what the customer wants and often in that process we tend to forget what the customer needs. All that matters is a little effort to take the time to understand the customer profile.
In most cases, we consider reconstructing products or remodeling services, however, surprisingly investing in elements that matter to customers narrows the chances of overhauling.
By now we’ve understood that having a value proposition is necessary and having a great value proposition can elevate your business. You can try out the above-mentioned steps or get in touch with us to know how we can help you identify yours.