What is value?
Value is usefulness or utility. When you run a business, the products and services that you sell, which have the most utility or the most use to the widest group of people or that solve a problem are considered valuable.
Value can also be determined by rarity. The more scarce a particular resource or skill set is the more valuable it is perceived.
On the other side, value can also be determined by demand. The more people who want a particular utility or product or service, the more valuable it is seen.
Value is everything in entrepreneurship, because it’s the measure of what other people think you and your business are worth compared to the wider market.
Value is essentially a way of this thing will. You should trust that it helps and all of these people as well also believe that it can help.
What is value proposition?
A value proposition is a promise you make to your customers once you start working with them. It essentially articulates exactly what you bring to the table and how your customers’ lives will be better after working with you.
Value propositions are extremely important because they identify exactly who you work with, the problems that you solve for that group of people, and the results that they are likely to see if they work with you.
When you know your value proposition, it’s much, much easier for your customers to identify whether they want to work with you. Businesses that struggle to make sales nine times out of 10, don’t have a clear and specific value proposition.
In that there are two fundamental questions we need to answer. First of all, who are my potential customers?
Secondly, what problems am I trying to solve?
Let’s look at some value propositions, and examples.
Trello, for example, the Workboard app thing is a platform that helps you visually organize anything with anyone. It’s a really clear identifier of who would benefit from working with Trello.
WordPress is an all-in-one website-building platform for people looking to build a website and sell their products.
High level is an all-in-one sales and marketing platform for agencies by agencies.
Circle.so is a tool that we frequently use. Brings together engaging discussions, members, live streams, chat events, and memberships.
Click up is one app to replace them all. All of your work in one place, tasks, docs, chat, goals, and more.
At Sell Your Service our value proposition is helping marketing agency owners double their monthly revenue and get 10 hours back a week in free time.
In order to be successful, businesses need to have a really strong value proposition. This is the statement that communicates clearly to your audience, who you are, what you do, and whether they should work with you. It’s also a really good way to qualify people out who aren’t interested in working with you.
What is a strong value proposition?
A strong value proposition is vital for today’s marketplace because so many people are entering the funnel-building space. You need to tell people why you are different and why they should work with you rather than anybody else.
When you craft your value proposition, make sure that it is hyper-specific and clear. Don’t go wishy-washy. Don’t use jargon.
Tell people how their lives will be better after working with you. By doing so, you can grab the attention of your current customers, your prospects, your leads, and anyone else who might be interested in working with you.
Value proposition design
Value proposition design is all about understanding your customer and what they need from you. It’s not about selling them your product. It’s about helping them solve a very specific problem.
There’s a book titled value proposition design it’s part of the strategizer series. It’s got loads of authors and they break value propositions down into three segments.
What is the job they’re trying to do? What is it that they do every day? What’s the work they’re trying to get done? What problems are they experiencing and how do they suffer?
Bit of a pro tip here. No one is looking for a marketing funnel. That is not a problem.
No one wakes up in the middle of the night thinking, “Oh my God, I need an email marketing campaign.”
The problem is the suffering that they are experiencing in their life.
For example, why do we never seem to have enough money? Why am I working 40 to 50 hours a week? Why can’t I get enough sleep? What are they looking to achieve or what goal are they looking to reach?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you need to get the answers to these questions. There’s no way I can help you with this other than you talking to your customers, doing a ton of research, having one-to-one interviews with them, asking them, joining groups, becoming obsessed with them, and delving deeper into their world.
Mental Contrasting
One of the easiest ways to explain quite a complex business idea, like a marketing funnel agency is to use mental contrasting of a before and after state for your customer. It’s a very powerful tool that helps people take ethereal things like ideas and dreams and turn them into reality.
The basic idea is to take your customer’s current situation and where they are and contrast it to where they could. For example, we could talk about a problem that they’re experiencing now and after working with you, how their life is so much better.
For example, if you wanna lose weight, you talk about where you are now, which is where you feel unfit. You feel unhealthy, you’re not sleeping well. And then afterward you feel healthier, you’ve got more energy and you’ve got a better body that contrast helps people focus on what it is that you actually do for them.
It’s an extremely simple tool the before and after effect, but it’s vital to put inside your value proposition in order to explain what it is that you actually do.
The more, you understand your value proposition, the easier it will be for you to create that mental contrast, the easier it is for you to create that mental contrast, the easier it is for the customer to understand in simple terms what you do.
So for example, Sell Your Service says that we will help double agency owners’ monthly revenue and get them 10 hours back per week. We teach sales frameworks and closing techniques. We talk about how to hire people, and how to create extremely complicated SaaS products and sell them to marketplaces.
I’ll show you where to find $25,000 leads. I’ll show you how to pitch them and sell them. But none of that is important compared to I will take where your current monthly revenue and double it. I will also take your current working hours and have you work 10 less of them per week.
That is something that people want. That is ultimately what we sell.
Value Proposition Formula
The basic formula for a value proposition is we help X type of people with Y type of problem achieve Z result.
Now, there are a few variations on these, and I’ll talk about that in a bit, but I want to give you two examples.
So let’s take a look at a couple of examples. This first one says, “We help online course creators with six-figure launches for high ticket courses.”
What does this mean? Well, online course creators are the audience. The problem is launching a high-ticket course, and the result is a sixth-figure launch.
Now, you might be thinking how the hell can I guarantee that? That’s all to do with qualification, but the point is that this is a far more appealing value proposition than we are a marketing agency.
Yet some marketing agencies might specialize with online course creators, but when you say we specialize in six-figure launches for high ticket courses for online course creators, you’re telling people who you work with, the problems you solve and the results they’re gonna get after working with you. This also sounds like something that you could charge over $25,000 for.
Here’s another example, even as a marketing agency, you can help people with productivity. Take a four-week vacation as a marketing manager without answering a single email while you’re away.
The problem is really obvious here. First of all, they go on vacation, but they might have to answer emails while they’re on holiday. So you are saying you’ll be able to go on vacation and take a four-week vacation as a marketing manager without having to answer a single email while you’re away telling people who you work with, the problem you solve, and the result you get.
And yes, you could do all of that with marketing systems, especially something like a SaaS product.
Look, keeping the customer in mind, instead of focusing on the details or the features of your product, is what will generate sales and attention for you.
To hone in on your value proposition, start looking at the customer jobs that your customers have to do. In this particular case, taking a four-week vacation is part of that job.
Take a look at the pains and the suffering that they’re going through either when doing that job or in another aspect of their business. And then think about what do they have to gain after working with you? What would be a better outcome from there?
You can begin to combine value propositions into something that is specific and unique for your business that sounds like it’s worth charging $25,000 for.
Value propositions are an essential tool in your marketing mix. All successful businesses have a really strong value proposition.
