What Makes a Business Unique?

The term "value proposition" is very common in the business ecosystem.

This concept is not just linked to how companies communicate their products and services to the market. It must be applied internally, being part of the company's processes and communication, in a clear and objective way.

Before getting into more technical terms, let's give some more practical examples of how the value proposition works:

Companies like Amazon focus on communicating to the market about the wide variety of products on their marketplaces and how they can deliver faster than any competition.

Zappos is known for providing fantastic customer service.

In short, this is the value proposition of these companies. It is a specific benefit promise to be delivered, communicated, and recognized.

In a market full of competitors, having a clear value proposition is undoubtedly what makes them stand out and sell more and better.

So, how to work this concept in your business? Let´s see.

The best way to structure your value proposition

The truth is that even without a formalized value proposition, your business probably already has one. That's why it's important to have control over how you want to communicate your company to the public, or the public will define this for you.

Even the small businesses in your neighborhood have one. If you like to have a coffee at the bakery near your house, and the employees know your basic order and your way of communicating (more formal or informal), already offering your favorite dish even before you ask for it, this business is probably already working on a value proposition focused on building relationships with its customers.

When you go to the center of any big city and find a cheap restaurant, typical of large centers, with delicious, always abundant food, you know that its value proposition, even if it is not formalized, is to offer food at the lowest possible price to win on scale.

In the first scenario, the value proposition is based on the relationship, and in the second, on price.

You don't have to make billions to have a value proposition. Intuitively, all companies already have one, whether it is good or not.

However, if you want to formalize it to improve your marketing and sales results, there are several ways to do so.

First, we have to map 3 important points:

What value does your product/service deliver?

First, always think about the result you offer to your customers and partners. When we talk about B2B sales, we can think of the value proposition based on a very simple triad:

• Cost reduction;
• Revenue increase;
• Risk reduction.

If your solution doesn't solve any of these points, your sale is probably anchored in relationship.

How to deliver your solution?

We are now on a very important topic. Talking with an entrepreneur and business consultant with over 10 years of experience in top management, we discussed the value proposition in depth.

An interesting point he raised is that many business managers, entrepreneurs, and salespeople end up forgetting that innovation is not always necessarily linked to the product.

A great product helps sell, of course. But your innovation may be in your business model and the way you deliver your solution to the customer.

Hubspost is an interesting case. They have a channel program where the partner indicates their software. Therefore, they are among the most interested parties in ensuring the tool works as effectively as possible, because they can integrate it with their tools and improve customers' results.

At the end of this process, partners leverage the system's results with their customers, increasing customer retention and, consequently, reducing churn.

It is interesting to see how, in addition to the product, we can add to the business model and service a way of generating value for partners and customers.

The value perceived by your customer

Communication is everything in life. It is very common for you to communicate "A" to someone and they understand "B"; in business terms, this can cause a lot of problems (and few results).

Imagine the following scenario: Company "A" sells business automation software. The practical result of applying this tool is a reduction in costs, because automated work can achieve the same desired result with fewer people. That's the obvious conclusion, right? Wrong.

Now imagine that there is another company (we'll call it "B") that is interested in buying company A's solution to automate commercial emails. She has faced difficulties in monitoring and training her salespeople as she works with many salespeople and a few managers. Since her product is relatively inexpensive and she needs multiple people in the commercial to sell at scale, reducing staff is not an option. The consequence of this is that many emails are sent with poor communication and outside the company's expectations. Over time, these mistakes start to get in the way of branding.

Therefore, she is looking for an automation tool to send emails. When considering company A's solution, the feature that most caught the attention of company B's managers was the possibility for all salespeople to use the same email template.

With this tool, company "B" will finally be able to standardize its speech, reducing the risk of misalignments when prospecting.

So, she bought the solution to reduce her risk and not her employee costs.

It is very important to talk to your partners and customers whenever possible (through online surveys, social networks, or customer service, for example) to understand how they perceive your service and business model.

The answer is likely to surprise you.

Implementing your value proposition in the sales routine

At the beginning of the article, we discussed the importance of studying your value proposition thoroughly. It is essential to have this information well aligned with your marketing and sales teams to communicate it effectively to the market.

Let's go back to the Insight Sales scenario. Our solution reduces implementation costs and time, and we strive to provide an extremely personalized, humanized service to our customers.

How do we communicate this to the market? First, we've made it very clear that we do months' work in under 60 seconds.

The savings generated are quite noticeable. In every contact we make, whether through Outbound or Inbound communication, we leave this information as evidence.

We positioned our tool as a salespeople's solution made for salespeople. When we say this, we make it very clear to our target audience that we understand their pain, and we will communicate in the same language.

Therefore, all our communication - whether made to prospect emails, marketing emails, presentations, proposals, institutional website, and blogs - needs to make this very clear.

After communicating, we need to execute on a daily basis with our customers what we want to have as a value proposition.

We keep the tone of our contact informal and always try to respond within 1 hour, even if the problem is not urgent.

We help with business processes and management tips, even if they are outside the scope of our tool. In this way, we put our value proposition into practice so that our customers' perception aligns with what we communicate and what we want to offer.

Not to say we're just talking about us, let's give an example of the value proposition of a company that you may already know very well.

Case Study Netflix - value proposition for studios and customers

Anyone born before the mid-1980s lived through the movie rental era. You had to go to a store, choose the VHS (who hasn't rewound a tape?) or DVDs you'd like to watch, and rent them.

It had to be returned before the rental company's deadline. If you missed the date, you had to pay a late fee. These types of services have generated substantial revenue for rental companies, with the most famous being Blockbuster.

Today, it is even difficult to imagine this scenario, but it was a great reality for movie lovers in the past.

However, in the late 1990s, Netflix emerged. Instead of charging high rental and delay fees, Reed Hestings' company designed a value proposition that eliminated multiple fees, giving customers the right to rent unlimited movies.

This idea at the time was a big disruption!

In the late 2000s, streaming technologies emerged. With them, Netflix was able to further revolutionize its value proposition, generating benefits for both the movie industry and its customers.

On the one hand, film production companies did not become so dependent on the high distribution costs of the traditional market, allowing them to produce more films, reach a larger audience, and do so more quickly. On the other hand, customers had access to a much larger catalog at a lower cost than renting just a VHS tape in the past.

It required significant investment in technology to deliver its value proposition more broadly, generating benefits for most of those involved in the process, making it an interesting case of a company that structured and evolved a value proposition that conquered the world.

Netflix is a giant that has had access to a lot of investment, but you don't have to look so far to see the benefit of a clear value proposition: after all, without one, you probably wouldn't have a favorite restaurant or bar to go.

How to have an efficient value proposition, after all?

It is critical to ensure the value proposition is read by the public promptly.

You must speak the same language as your customer, and use all resources to make them want to communicate with your company.

So, the best way to do this is to have clear guidelines for the entire company and to reinforce day-to-day communication, while not forgetting that the delivery of the product/service/business model itself is the most important thing to reinforce the proposal in the consumer's mind.

That's why you have to invest in improving deliveries whenever possible, aiming to constantly improve your customers' perception of your brand. There's no better way to demonstrate your value than with satisfied customers.

And you, what is your value proposition?