Steve Giglio at a table conducting sales training with a corporate executive woman

Creating Your Value Proposition: It’s Not Your History!

Curating your organization’s value proposition is a fun exercise that brings people together along with synthesizing your company’s DNA. Too often, however, organizations feel they need to present their history of achievements, how they began as an organization X number of years ago and/or the biographies of their founders. All of these are wrong. How your organization got its start can be interesting ONLY after you’ve presented your unique offering, not before it.

In this video, I explain what I mean and the importance of your team being in “one voice” when communicating your brand:

Four Score and Seven Years Ago….

That line worked for Lincoln, who was establishing a point about the evolution of a nation over time. But if YOU try to give an oral history of your company, it won’t work as well. I recall one Fortune 100 client whose value proposition began with the company’s founder and the international situation he found himself in that catalyzed the creation of their service. And this went on for four pages! This was more a cure for insomnia than anything else. What he did not deliver was how his company and its offering had become indispensable in today’s world.

Developing Your Value Proposition

I’ve worked with hundreds of executives, helping them synthesize their company’s DNA into a coherent and logical value proposition. The process is not that hard. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Gather together your top three business development execs who have a track record of procuring solid business for your organization.
  2. Schedule an entire day to mine their experience and situations so you create a value proposition that is ready for the real world.
  3. Begin your facilitation of the group with the challenges they are facing in your marketplace and how your product/service solves these issues.
  4. Start the outline. Create an agenda of DNA points that need to be made. List the points in the order that best edifies your clients. Think of each point as an individual chapter in a book. Make sure the order of DNA points is defendable, i.e. there’s a reason why you discuss point A before B.
  5. Storyboard each point with its own page and place each page on a wall to view the story line. It’s amazing how clear your value proposition becomes when everyone can see it!
  6. Get it done in eleven pages, no more.
  7. Script the presentation. Yes, script it, no bullets points. The more your team is in one-voice with your value proposition the better the resonance of clarity in the marketplace and the less blurring your brand has.

Enjoy the process; it’s quite revealing and very fulfilling. Let me know how it goes or, contact me if you need help guiding your team through it.

When was the last time you heard each team member deliver your company’s value proposition? What did it reveal to you? Let me know in the comments below. -SG