Crafting Messages that Sell: How to Build Your Value Proposition & Create a Competitive Advantage

It came out of nowhere. In fact, it was a complete surprise, and contrary to my thinking when I began working with the client. As most of life's little lessons are, they strike you square between the eyes when you're least expecting it. And this one was a bullseye. We were working with a client selling a commodity in a very competitive space, with lots of price wars. The pain of globalization was eroding margins and putting companies out of business. Offshore sources, despite strained English and 14 time zones away, were taking away market share from this firm at a precipitous pace. In fact, the firm itself was considering outsourcing some of its own work to offshore companies. So, it was with these many challenges that we began work on a project to develop their Killer Value Proposition and a clear message that would resonate with customers old and new. That would win them more customers that were NOT SIMPLY BUYING ON PRICE, which was originally expected to be an issue. You can imagine our surprise when NOT ONE CUSTOMER mentioned ROI, savings or profits. Listening to the Customer - Speaking Greek? The top items came back from some carefully crafted customer surveys. The surveys were handled directly by my team, not a telemarketer or some generic email or mail survey. NOTE: the best results here is going to be handled by a combination of top internal & external people interacting directly with your customers, not a 3-question survey tacked on to the end of your customer service calls.