Building a company, department, division or even a personal brand is tough. Not only do you have to put in a tremendous amount of work to get it off the ground, you also need to look after your customers, go to market effectively, make all the right promises, differentiate yourself, and, of course, make a profit!
In this 7-part blog series, we’ll break down some of the elements that go into scaling a psychometric service.
What is a value proposition?
It's the promise you make to your customers - the value you are committing to deliver to them.
Typically, a value proposition is defined by an organisation’s founding members. These are the people who hold the passion and vision of the company and have a clear view and understanding of its value.
It’s hugely important to fully understand the value that your company is providing, and how you can effectively communicate that value with both internal and external stakeholders. For companies that are looking at creating a value proposition, we strongly recommend answering the following key questions:
Once you’ve answered these questions, take a moment to sense-check that others would recognise you by this statement.
How can I formulate my own value proposition?
A typical value proposition is created using the following formula:
For [Target client/industry]
Who [Statement of need or opportunity],
Our product is a [Product name/description]
That provides [The value you provide]
Unlike [Reference to competition]
Our product [Statement of differentiation/features]
Here’s an example of a value proposition created with this formula:
For internal recruitment teams who are frustrated by high staff attrition rates and poor‑quality new recruits, our sales-focussed psychometric assessment highlights strong candidates and removes poor-fit candidates with a robust, measurable, and repeatable assessment process. Unlike our competitors, we only focus on assessing salespeople.
When creating your value proposition, it’s important to use clear, succinct, and
accurate language. This will make it straightforward to convey to stakeholders, and far easier for everyone to understand and remember!
In his programme Traction, Gino Wickman suggests that the more clearly defined an
organisation’s vision is, the more your employees can make it happen.
Wickman formulated a list of statements relating to organisational vision, that companies can grade themselves against. The higher the grade, the more likely the success:
Here are the statements. Go through each one and rank your company 1-5 (‘1’ being weak and ‘5’ being strong). Why not take it to your next management meeting and make it a collaborative exercise!
• We have a clear vision in writing that has been properly communicated and is shared by everyone in the company.
• Our core values are clear, and we are hiring, reviewing, rewarding, and firing around them.
• Our core business is clear, and we keep our people, systems, and processes aligned and focused on it.
• Our target market and our definition of our ideal customer are clear and our marketing and sales efforts are focused on it.
• Our 3 unique differentiators are clear and all of our marketing and sales efforts
communicate them.
• We have a proven process for doing business with our customers. It has been named and visually illustrated, and all of our salespeople use it.
• We have systems for receiving regular feedback from customers and employees.
Remember, sales is always only ever about solving problems, and this is always what buyers are looking to achieve. Can you write down the problem(s) you’re solving?
Here are a few problems that we know exist to which the solution is online assessments.
For example, are you helping your customers:
Once you understand what problems you’re solving, you'll be able to build your product, make decisions on how to support the service, change your website to reflect the promises you’re making, and start to blog to be helpful, useful, and interesting.
When you successfully communicate a strong value proposition to your prospects, growth will often follow. Of course, it's not guaranteed, and it’s certainly not permanent; there are, however, a few ways to promote sustainable growth: