A Sticky Value Proposition Opens Doors
You can describe it in 10 seconds. It leads to follow-up questions. Questions lead to lunches. Lunches lead to other meetings. Between all this momentum, you are closing new business.
In website format, the scenario looks like this: You can describe it in a one to three line phrase. It leads to more clicks. Clicks lead to opt-ins and purchase page visits. Visits lead to purchases. Between that, users are sharing your links.
When this happens, you have a sticky value proposition. You also love telling people more about what your company does. A sticky value proposition is both easy for people to get and easy for them to repeat. But chances are, you haven’t nailed it yet. Most entrepreneurs are still developing a sticky value proposition, so don’t feel down. This blog post is meant to help.
Peter J. Thompson, the creator of the value proposition canvas, has the most helpful articulation of what a value proposition is and how you can craft yours: “A value proposition is where your company’s product offer intersects with your customers’ desires. It’s the magic fit between what you make and why people buy it.”
More clearly, a value proposition is a combination of your features, benefits and experience. Also pulled from Peter Thompson:
- Features – a factual description of how your product works. The features are the functioning attributes of your product.
- Benefits – the ways that the features make your customer’s life easier by increasing pleasure or decreasing pain.
- Experience – how owning your product makes the customer feel. Product experience is different from features and benefits since it’s more about the emotional reasons why people buy your product.
If your answer to the question “What do you do?” is not helping you get the right meetings, then revisit your value proposition and invest some time into making it sticky.
