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Have you ever lost a sale and thought to yourself – why didn’t they choose us? We’re so obviously the best choice – why didn’t they know this – if only they understood?
Or perhaps you fail to break through on social media and nobody pays you any attention at all. Perhaps your business finds it hard to stand out in a competitive field in any meaningful way. If this sounds like you then stick around.
Let me ask you this. Is your business the same as your competitors? Do you do the same things in the same way as all the others. Are your values, motivation, ethos and mission the same. Is it true that you bring nothing different to the table?
If you’re like most business owners you’ll probably scream back a big fat NO.
But how would I know this. How, unless I’m your mother, would I discover this X Factor you and your team can see – but which is largely invisible to the rest of the world?
What even is that X Factor?
You might tell me it’s your story, your motivations, your systems, your values, pricing, customer service or a whole bunch of other things. Through all these things what you’re doing is expressing the same thing to me in different ways.
It’s your value.
Every business is essentially the same. It’s a value exchange. I have something of value. I look for the person who wants that the most and we trade.
If you want to succeed in business then you need to refine and perfect that value and then show it as clearly as possible to your ideal customer.
There are two traditional tools businesses are taught to use. The long winded and frankly boring Value Proposition and on the other hand the snappy Elevator Pitch. Neither of these are particularly useful at helping us with anything other than having more documents to store.
So let me introduce you to the very useful and easy to create – Value Positioning Statement.
Grab My VPS Worksheet
Everything you need to craft your value positioning statement
At first this might seem so simple it’s silly. But I promise that if you follow through with this you’ll have a powerful tool. Pretty much every time I work through this with clients it gets exciting and emotional.
The value positioning statement has three parts. The trick is to be a specific as possible.
1 – I help… ( ideal customer )
2 – To … ( do a specific thing )
3 – So that they can … ( enjoy a specific benefit )
Now at this point you might be laughing into your soup. Imagine for a second that you didn’t have to fight for all that second rate work. That you were, in fact, always chosen first. If this were true then what client would you always choose? That’s who you put in part one.
If you could only work on your favorite most profitable work, or the work you love doing the most, what would it be. This is what goes in part two.
And when people hire you it’s because they’re looking for some kind of transformation. They want to move from where they are to where they want to be. What is the result or benefit. This is what you put in part three.
Watch the video above for some examples.
From these examples you’ll find that we’ve connected much more deeply and in something really simple and snappy. Now when someone says – ‘so what do you do’ – you’ll have that wow answer.
The VPS is simple and because it’s simple it’s practical and like any practical and simple tool – it gets used!
When you start using it in social profile descriptions, email signatures, website headers, business cards and anywhere else you regularly show up it starts to have an impact. But more important that this is that it acts as a compass for your content marketing. Your VPS acts as a little Value Power Station fueling a beacon to attract your ideal client online.
Have a go at creating your own VPS. You’ll find the temptation at first is to make it quite ling but keep stripping it back and distilling it down until it’s simple and powerful. Once you have it, use it everywhere. Let it be the power station which fuels and directs all your content marketing and provides you with a much stronger sense of identity.
Grab My VPS Worksheet
Everything you need to craft your value positioning statement
This content was originally published here.
