What is a Value Proposition?
The definition of a value proposition is ‘a clear, compelling and credible expression of the experience that a customer will receive from your value-creating offering’. The way to achieve this is by your organisation designing and aligning all your resources to deliver your value proposition – the difference between just saying what you’re going to do versus actually doing it.
A value proposition should provide a statement of business strategy; more specifically a statement of the way a business proposes to use all its resources to deliver superior value to its clients, in a profitable way, for itself.
Questions to be answered
• What is the timeframe for this proposition?
• Who is the intended client?
• What does the organisation want that client to do?
• What are the best alternatives this client will have if they don’t use our organisation?
• What will be the client’s experience? This must include price and must be measurable.
Getting started
It’s a process that must include clients/customers and can have various useable outputs e.g. product management, innovation, marketing messages etc. Creating value propositions must start at the corporate or highest level in the organisation and translate downwards, right down to individual sales opportunities.
P.S. What it’s not
• a new name for a marketing statement or USP
• a list of general benefits
• a description of what your organisation does for a customer
• the output of a customer satisfaction survey
• a corporate positioning statement
• brand essence
• elevator pitch