Mastering Your Value Proposition and How to Build Trust

Your Value Proposition is the most important sentence you will ever say in your life (well, maybe except for “will you marry me”). You need to develop it to be as effective as possible, and deliver it in a way that builds trust.

Development of a value proposition occurs in two phases: brainstorming and refining.

1.      Brainstorming

Build a list of the following:

• the challenges that your market presents
• the way that you meet those challenges
• the unique approach that your company takes
• where you are going in the future
• your personality traits like amiability, attention to detail, or personal drive

2.      Refining

Next, decide which points on the brainstorming list are most important, and craft it into a unique value proposition. Your value proposition should be:

• a sentence or phrase of ten words or less
• explains how you improve your customers’ lives
• completely unique from your competitors’ propositions
• memorable and catchy
• high-impact without any jargon or unnecessary words
• accessible and understandable by people outside your industry.

Delivery is even more difficult than development.

1.      Oral Delivery

A successful oral delivery should include the following:

• genuine honesty that comes from sincere belief in what you are saying
• readiness to put up or shut up if asked to explain how your company accomplishes what you claim
• readiness in your whole business so you don’t have to refer them to an expert
• readiness to give accurate estimates of cost and results in case your customer is looking to buy

2.      Written Delivery

Written delivery is all about scaffolding information. You should have the following tiers of information:

• your one-sentence value proposition in slightly more formal language than with oral delivery
• information on exactly how you will achieve your value proposition in detail
• breakdown of costs, schedules, and rewards

Building Trust

Trust is absolutely integral to the world economy. Unfortunately, it is also the most emotional, and least logical, part of business relations. To build trust, you have to be willing to accept others emotions as valid and important, even if you disagree.

Ways to build trust:

• accept whatever wants and needs they are telling you
• find out what rewards they want from you
• promisesome of these rewards in advance
• provide transparency about your processes
• report regularly on your progress and finances
• acknowledge challenges and problems in the past
• allow them to look into your competitors
• deliver/pay on time, every time
• follow-up to see how they are doing
• admit guilt if your company makes a mistake
• refine your processes to better suit their needs

If you get a great value proposition and can get people to trust you, you already have a successful business. All that is left is to do your thing and reap the rewards.