Sales, marketing, pitching, creating Powerpoints – This is the skill you need to elevate for your product launch
A successful Product Launch is essential for all organizations. I had the exciting opportunity to build up global companies several times, and if I could go back in time, I wish I could tell myself to learn the skill of creating outstanding Value Propositions sooner to elevate.
The ability to create strong and compelling value propositions are essential at all stages in your entrepreneurial process. Value propositions are used in the sales process, creating sales material, writing blogs, creating products, holding presentations, etc.
Give me 5 minutes to twist your mind – We hire products to do things for us
The University of Phoenix has created this fantastic video where professor Clayton Christensen explains that we hire products to do things for us. Take 5 minutes of your life and watch it. I promise it will be worth it to prepare for your product launch.
In the video, you will learn how one of the biggest companies did it all wrong.
OK, great I have your attention ;-). Is your mind spinning? Do you feel mentally challenged? What job are your prospect customers trying to get done? I am sure it is not the features and functions of your product. They are looking for something else.
Now let’s discuss Value Propositions
Working with entrepreneurs, marketers, and salespeople globally I have seen the same blunder repeated over and over again. The mistake is the lack of customer focus. Let me give you an example that you have most likely done or experienced. Let’s imagine you are about to do a sales presentation. How do you start your presentation? What do you have in the middle? After being in hundreds of sales presentations, I would claim this is the most common outline:
- Everybody around the table presents themselves
- Salesperson do some introduction
- The salesperson shows first powerpoint slide about his company: history, what they do etc.
- Sales Person show more slides that are about the company and will then continue presenting the product with the focus on features and functions.
So why is this wrong? Because it is an egocentric approach. All it says is me, me, me and me. I am sorry to say, but customers don’t care about you. They care about themselves. And you must think about this all the time. What customers want is to hire a product to do things for them, and your job is to create a fantastic value proposition that tells that story. Not push the customer through a boring presentaiton that makes them fall asleep.
What is a value proposition? It is a clear statement about the outcomes that an individual or an organization can realize from using your product, service or solution.
Key here is OUTCOME
4 tools to help you create an amazing Value Proposition
I have worked for companies with extremely complex solutions and customer outcomes where it has been challenging to develop strong and compelling value propositions. But if you work hard enough, you will find it.
To help myself and others, I wrote this article on How to create Value Propositions. To read it CLICK HERE.
I also wrote a story revealing my process on how to tackle the value proposition creation for a complex product and service. To read it CLICK HERE.
And for people that are more graphical, I have created below SlideShare to help you build your Value Proposition no matter how complex environment you are operating in. It has helped over 80 000 people, and I hope that you will be 80 001.
How to Create a Strong Value Proposition Design for B2B - It's all about the customer from Daniel Nilsson
Bonus - Create Customer Profiles and Buyer Personas
Here are some thought-provoking questions for you.
How many times have you started a new job and within the first week you are trained and educated about the customer. What jobs the customer has. What pains they want to avoid and what gains they are looking for. How much research material about the customer did you receive and were able to read?
I think it is safe to assume that you most likely did not receive any training or read any material at any of your jobs.
I have create a guide for how to create Customer Profiles and Buyer Personas. Make sure you create in-depth customer profiles and share them with your team.
Good luck!
