I3 value proposition means not just clever words spinning a tale, but meaningful words describing a true-truth about your product or service. In increasingly crowded, hyper competitive, and fast-moving markets, you have to think in terms of how your target customer will process your offering in a sea of similar (or similar enough) offerings. Your consumer is probably not as much a student of your market as you are (or should be).
Knowing who is your ideal target customer focuses all your energies on higher probability prospects and also has the added benefit of optimizing your messaging to that audience.
Your understanding of your target customer will influence your marketing and the direct sales communication you have with them and the way you interact and serve them.
Access challenges run both ways: smaller companies face challenges selling to bigger ones, but oftentimes, bigger players can’t get small enough to sell to smaller companies or individual buyers.
Whether you developed your product with a specific customer need in mind, or happened upon a product and want to sell it to someone, you have to start by knowing your customer. Before the Internet boom, I assembled a group of friends and raised angel capital to start a company to develop a commodity chemical trading system, based on the notion that a hundred pounds of a specific chemical powder was the same as any other hundred pounds of the same chemical powder. It would be a trading system for chemicals – a brilliant idea – or so it seemed.
You might want to look at the point in your launch cycle in which your company actually asks customers their opinion. For example, a few years ago, BusinessWeek cited Xerox as typically developing products fully and then asking customers what they thought. Xerox has since refocused on customers from the onset in their product development timeline. Stephen Hoover, vice-president of Xerox’s research and development hub commented, “The team had had a certain idea of what customers wanted. Going out and actually talking to them really changed that.”
Understand Your Target Market and size up the “universe” in which you’ve chosen to compete. The market forces behind big ticket, complex sales differ significantly from those of small-ticket or consumer-based sales. An understanding of your marketplace must go beyond the simple and take into account not only competitors but alternatives. You must also grasp the market forces (see note below) driving the marketplace “universe” your company competes in, as well.
Carefully crafted messages alone won’t sell your product or service. You must target your message for your best audience and via the most effective venues. While doing this you must continuously refine your position against relevant competitors in the marketplace.
