Why Businesses Suck
I always get amazed when I have seasoned business professionals or have my entrepreneurship students who can not articulate what their value proposition is. Lets be honest. If you don't know how you are creating value value for the consumer, and can not articulate it succinctly. Your business sucks.
Your value proposition is the core of your company, the heart beat of your business.
Women in the online automated income e-commerce space often pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to hear Alexandra Wolf preach about getting "crystal clear clarity" on what your business' focus is. Alex obviously understands that her brainchild BossBabe provides an online platform for personal development and networking for millennial women. Intrigued by this millennial millionaire superstar entrepreneur, I enrolled in one of her one on one Millennial Rich Girl personal seminars, and I was shocked and how pervasive this fundamental problem was.
I often forget that as an university educator immersed in the field, studying and talking to entrepreneurs, that the lay man, everyday business owner often lacks the fundamental understanding of what a value proposition entails. A value proposition is the core business function of a company, the heart beat of your business. Often, value proposition that solve problems are the most effective. So I highly encourage anyone who wants to start a business to envision the value proposition as some kind of problem the consumer faces.
Next, you need to understand, with out a doubt how you intend to make a company or product attractive to customers. Why would today's global consumer, overloaded with information want to give your company their hard earned money. This is why the problem solving approach to articulating a value proposition makes sense. Just because you know why your product will make your ideal customer’s life better doesn’t mean they do. Take the front facing camera on iPhones debuted by Steve Jobs in 2010. Initially this feature was conceived and demonstrated as facilitating video conferencing not selfie taking.
Just because you know why your product will make your ideal customer’s life better doesn’t mean they do.
Which leads me to another aspect of value propositions that are super important: benefits vs features. Features are things the that your product has or is. Benefits are things the consumer gets out of using your product. Lets go back to BossBabe here. It's feature is a social platform to network millennial women. It's benefits are self empowerment and improved performance of millennial business women wanting to operate automated income website businesses. Crystal clear what they do right!
A good value proposition is:
- Clear (easy to understand)
- Communicates the concrete results a customer will get from purchasing and using your products and/or services.
- Communicate what is different or better about your product and/or services Vis-à-vis competitors.
- Is authentic, don't bullshit your consumers.
- Succinct and concise. No consumer wants freaking novel. Get to the point.
