[Define] Your Business Value Proposition - (4 min read)

In my last two blogs we talked about Why You’re Really in Business, and How to Identify Your Ideal Customer.

In this blog we’re going to take it to the third critical question:

Why should they buy from you?

Businesses everywhere, and in every industry, are constantly trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Ask yourself these two questions:

- Why would a customer want to purchase your good or service over that of a competitor?

- How do you differentiate your good or service from the competition?

The answer to this is knowing what is called your:

Unique Value Proposition

I’ve said this in my last two blogs and I’m going to say it again:

 “You’re selling your product or service because you’re solving a problem, or problems, for your customers”.

But likely, other businesses are trying to solve their problem(s) too.

Your differentiation, or unique value proposition, is your secret ingredient. It's something that's distinctive to your business that offers a definitive, tangible benefit to your customer.

Your Unique Value Proposition is something that only you can provide, or no one else can do it as well, or they can’t do it at your price.

Some differentiators are easy to figure out while others are harder to come by.

Maybe you're the only dentist with a kid’s play area on the premises. All other things being equal, that’s a differentiator.

But maybe you’re a business that doesn’t have such an easily defined advantage. So how can you create a differentiator for your business?

Let’s look at a few ways, but there are many others:

- Look at your competition. What do they do that you can’t? What can you do that they can’t do, or do as well? Maybe your location is more convenient to customers – use whatever differentiator you can establish.

- Read your competitors’ social media reviews. Skip the 5-Star reviews and focus on the 3 and 4-Star reviews. When you see a comment that goes something like, “I would have given them a higher ranking if”, everything after the word “if” is your golden nugget. Deliver on that and you will be doing something your competition isn’t.

- Offer something to address common customer concerns and frustrations. For example, guarantee that your service delivery technician will show up within 15 minutes of the scheduled time or you’ll provide the first hour of work free.

- Never make a claim you can't deliver on. Be sure you can do what you promise or your differentiator will be useless, your reputation will suffer, as will your business. Trust is important!

- Build great customer relationships. The #1 way to differentiate yourself is to build great customer relationships. Move from a transactional mindset to a relationship mindset.

Why????

The simple truth is that….

Buyers and sellers with the best relationships will do the most business together.

Here are some questions you need to answer to help you Define Your Unique Business Value Proposition:

- Product/Service Description and problem you’re solving:

- What are you not going to do?

- What will be unique about your offering?

- Where is the proof you can deliver on the promise?

- What is your pricing strategy?

Once you've established your differentiator(s), reduce it or them into a few words – this is your elevator pitch!

Communicate it at every opportunity.

Use it in your ads, letterhead, marketing collateral, your website, signage, sales calls, and everywhere.

Your differentiators should roll right off of your tongue.

If you don’t know why customers should buy from you, they won’t either!

And make sure you deliver on it!

Ultimately, you need to help your customers answer the following question:

Why my product or service?

We can help you with this!

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you define your unique business value proposition, or any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2019 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

How to Identify Your Ideal Customer Persona

In my last blog we talked about the first question you must answer to help keep you from struggling to market your business, or even get it off the ground:

What problem are you solving?

As I said in my last blog:

“You’re selling your product or service because you’re solving a problem, or problems, for your customers”.

Once again, I want you to read that last sentence!

Knowing that answer sets you up to answer the next important question:

Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

Who exactly are your customers? Whose problem(s) are you solving?

And it doesn’t matter what you sell, your target isn’t ‘everyone’. Not everyone needs what you sell, nor can you reach everyone that needs it.

You’re going to invest a lot of time and money getting the word out about your good or service, so your marketing plan needs to be specific.

You have to be more specific about whom you’re marketing so that you’re ROI on your advertising dollars is higher.

You need to know Your Ideal Customer Persona.

A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, or customer set. It’s the segment of the market you’re trying to reach.

To do this you need to do some basic market research. And you don’t need to be a giant corporation to do this. There is information readily available to you right in front of you.

Look at your customer database or sales records. Interview customers when they are in the store. Send out surveys. There are many other ways that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

Use website forms and social media platforms to capture important customer information.

Quora.com – see the most common questions for your niche.

Facebook Groups – review profiles of group members.

Online Marketplaces & Review Sites such as Amazon, Yelp, Udemy, AppStore etc.

Google Analytics – review demographic &  interest reports.

Facebook Analytics – review demographic reports.

YouTube Analytics – review demographic reports.

This research will give you real data about your prospective and existing customers, and the problem(s) you’re solving for them. This is the person for whom you’re creating your content, products, or service.

Your ideal customer persona is not a real person but an aggregate of your ideal customers’ traits. Not everyone will have the exact set of traits you list, but they will fall in there somewhere.

Knowing your ideal customer persona will allow you to personalize and/or target your marketing for different segments of your audience. This means you may have multiple customer personas.

You’ll need to discover:

- What problem(s) your customers are trying to solve

- What their demographics are

- What problems you can help solve

- And where they’re going now to get help

By knowing these things about your customers, you won’t be sending the same lead nurturing emails or other marketing campaigns to everyone in your database. You can segment by customer persona and tailor your messaging accordingly.

Developing a customer persona results in stronger and more cost effective marketing. It allows you to convey a more tailored message, minimize advertising waste, and even discover objections holding back customers.

Keep in mind, remember your buyer persona is a theory. Test this theory with the feedback and data you’ll collect about your audience as you grow.

You can now get the right message, to the right people, at the right time!

It starts by spending a little time identifying Who Your Ideal Customer Persona is.

We can help!

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you identify your ideal customer persona, or any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2019 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Why You’re Really In Business

If you don’t have a clear answer to the following question, you may struggle to market your business, or even get it off the ground:

What problem are you solving?

You’re selling your product or service because you’re solving a problem, or problems, for your customers.

Read that last sentence again!

This is a fundamental mindset shift that must occur. And before you hang your shingle over your door and start trying to bring customers through the door,

Know the problem you’re solving!

You may make the greatest widget in the world but if your widget doesn’t solve a problem for someone, then you’ve made a great widget with no market to sell it.

Make sure you understand exactly what their problem is, or what issue they’re trying to resolve.

Not only do you have to know what the problem is, but you must understand how it impacts your customer.

You’re going to invest a lot of time and money getting the word out about your good or service, so your marketing plan needs to be specific.

Knowing the problem you’re solving is the first step. From there you can narrow down your efforts to those people whose problem(s) you’re actually able to solve?

And it doesn’t really matter what you sell, your target isn’t ‘everyone’.

So, don’t forget Why You’re Really in Business.

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you with any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2019 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

8 Benefits of a Business Health Check

In EVERY business in EVERY industry in the world there are always more costs savings, more efficiencies, more profit, more market share, and more success obtainable than what is currently being achieved? 

Do you want more of any or all of those things? Are you happy with where your business is today or do you want it to be more?

Every year most of us go to our doctor to get and annual health checkup. It helps us see how things are doing and identify where problem areas are in our health.

So why not do a Business Health Check every year?

Let’s start by identifying what a business health check is.

A business health check is simply a full diagnostic of the state of a business.  

It starts with an evaluation of the current position of the business and provides an assessment of the critical elements affecting your business both internally and externally.

This assessment gives an external view of the business to highlight where things are going well, the areas that need change, and how to improve those areas to make a business even more successful.

Why does your business need a health check?

The main reason would be to see how we are doing as a business.

And a business health check is not just for struggling businesses. Healthy businesses can benefit from one as well.

It’s just like getting an annual health check – we may feel just fine but the doctor may discover something we weren’t even aware of so we can address it.

Here are 8 Benefits of getting a Business Health Check regularly!

1. Know the Current State of Your Business.

Probably the most obvious benefit of a business health check is getting an objective overview of where you stand.

This offers you with the basic knowledge of the overall business performance, where things are going well, where opportunities for improvements and growth are, customer experience, employee engagement, and more.

You should come away with a clear, objective view of your current overall business health.

2. Understand Your Business Maturity.

Businesses all go through three basic maturity stages:

A.  Infancy: Startup and initial growth

B.  Adolescence: Emergence and expansion

C.  Maturity: Stability and progress

At each stage there are a lot of competing demands upon the business owner. A health check will help pinpoint exactly where a business stands internally, and externally in relation to the market. Understanding your maturity is necessary for identifying improvements to get your business to the next stage of maturity

3. Identify Strengths & Weaknesses.

There are many business owners don’t think they need help. The truth is that some of them may be right.

But wouldn’t it be valuable to have an external expert an objective look into what you are doing, how you’re progressing toward your goals, and make further suggested improvements to help your business become stronger?

4. Spot New Growth Opportunities.

Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. Maybe you think you’re ready to expand but you’re not…or vice versa.

Look for new growth in your industry, other growth areas you may not have considered. Or, perhaps further growth in an area that you have already built upon.

A business health check can help you identify potential growth areas, and better prepare for this expansion?

5. Identify Business Threats.

Do you fully understand where the threats to your business success are coming from? Internally or externally?

Identifying these threats won’t necessarily make them go away, but knowing what they are will help you adapt your business to mitigate the damage as much as you can.

6. Re-calibrate Your Business Goals

Re-calibrate and refocus on the long-term goals you have for your business.

It’s easy to get caught up in the everyday problem solving, we lose sight of the reason and goals we had for the business, it’s time to get back on track again.

7. Get an Objective View

An opportunity to look at your business from a different perspective.

Getting another perspective from outside the industry with business experience can provide constructive ideas to really ensure future success.

8. Gain a Mentor

You get an expert to discuss your business with, much like a mentor.

Sometimes a business owner does not have anyone suitable to talk to about the business at a strategic level. Employees are usually not appropriate, friends and work colleagues may not understand or be experienced, but a business health expert, or consultant, is trained to quickly assess your business and help with problems and changes for improvement.

There are many more benefits of doing a Business Health Check, but the 8 above are great benefits for you and your business.

For more information about Business Health Checks and how The Cobalt Group can help you do business health assessment, or help you with any other business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2019 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

5 Benefits of Clearly Defined Coaching Goals

If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you going to know when you get there?

In the coaching side of my practice I sometimes run across clients that have been previously told to ‘improve their performance’, but not what part(s) of their performance actually need improvement. When coaching a client/employee it is important for both the coach and the client/employee to have specific goals and timelines.

Goals have to be established in order to give direction and purpose to the coaching session whether it is a client or an employee. Ambiguous goals are usually never achieved and may cause frustration, at a minimum.

Defining Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time  driven (SMART) goals will plot a marker in the horizon. It’ll act as your beacon. Without that beacon you are navigating blindly.

Having no clearly defined goal causes frustration for both you and your client/employee because there never seems to be any improvement or progress. It creates a constant cycle of failing to meet some objective – a cycle that will keep repeating without a clearly defined goal.

Setting a clearly defined goal gives you and your client/employee direction and purpose. Imagine being handed a bunch of tools and materials and told to build something without a clear vision or goal of what is to be built. 

The same holds true for developmental goals. It is not good enough to tell your employee they must improve in sales or build widgets faster. These types of goals create more confusion because they do not know where to start because they don't know where they're specifically going.

Here are 5 benefits to establishing clearly defined goals upfront for your client/employee:

• Both you and your client/employee have a better chance of starting in the right direction together

• Coaching time is more efficient once goals are discussed upfront

• You are able to plan ahead of the session and prepare targeted questions

• Coaching session are direct and avoid meandering

• You, as the coach, will come across more clear, instilling confidence in your client/employee

Going back to the building analogy, you may end up building a stool when what was really needed was as birdhouse. Clearly defined goals are the cornerstone of effective and successful coaching. 

By establishing clearly defined goals you help to set your client/employee up for success.

For more information about coaching and mentoring, or to see how The Cobalt Group can help you with this or any other business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2019 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Looking Within While Looking Without

About 3 years ago I took a sabbatical from Cobalt Group to be the Executive Director for a park and recreation district that employed about 60 full and part time staff. It was a fantastic job and a great experience.

When I started I discovered that the district had been running at a loss for the previous six years. Even though the district was supported by an operations and maintenance tax levy (about 58% of total revenue), I knew that I had to treat it like a business and start making it profitable. My first approach was to start looking within and control the controllable. In my experience, the easiest thing to control is the expense side of the P&L. The harder thing to do is be looking without because revenue is harder to control than expenses because, while no business can make customers come in, they can have more control over their operating costs. So I began looking at what the expenses were and where savings could be made.

The first thing I did was to determine what the cost of operating the district was. This had not apparently been done before but I figured out what it cost to open the doors every day. From there I looked at all the items on the expense side of the P&L and began working with my senior staff to understand what those expenses were and what they really needed to be. We looked at labor costs, vendor contracts, regulatory expenses, maintenance, utilities, cost of goods sold, and every other expense category to get an idea of where we could shave those costs.

Some tough decisions were made but I made sure that my staff understood what we were doing and why we were doing it. They knew their departments better than I did and by making them part of the process they now had ownership in the outcome. We met frequently to see how costs were tracking, and made adjustments where we felt it was warranted.

The staff performed wonderfully and at the end of my first full fiscal year, with only one fee increase made to only one program, we ended up with slightly over $20K in profit. This was the first profitable year the district had achieved in six years. We kept up the cost controls and at the end of my second full fiscal year we had a profit slightly over $50K. This occurred because my entire staff understood what we were trying to do, they were invested in the outcome, and they worked diligently to make it happen.

Getting back to profitability provided many lessons learned that I will share in future blogs. But going back to the basics was key. For any business, if you want a better chance at increasing your margin, start where you can have the most control – expenses. But don’t neglect the revenue side of the equation either. Start Looking Within While Looking Without.

The Cobalt Group can help you with this. Ask us how.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2018 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The One That Got Away

In the second year of my first sales job with a major IT company I was working the biggest deal I had in my pipeline to that date. 

It was going to be $8.5M over a five year period. The math was easy and even back then it would have been half of my annual quota for the next five years (assuming no yearly increases – yeah, right!). And with a deal that size I had a lot of help from upper management.

I was in tight with the customer. It was a small group and they were all of the decision makers. 

Fairly fresh out of many sales training courses, I applied all of that knowledge to every aspect of my capture plan for that deal. I met with the customer often, and a lot of those were at his request. 

I knew the requirements inside and out and we had a solution that answered it, and then some. The customer verified that our solution was a great fit, too.

Then, as often happens in government sales, the program was put on hold. The customer didn’t know for how long but felt that it was most likely till the end of the government fiscal year. 

I wasn’t too worried. That was 6 months away and I had two things in my favor – the first month of the next government fiscal year was also the last month of my company’s fiscal year so I thought it would be a great close out for that year and, secondly, I had a great pipeline that would take me over my quota if that deal happened to slip even further.

I told that customer that I would check in periodically and asked that if things changed to please let me know as well. 

I called about 3 months later and discovered that only weeks prior they had gotten their money and went with a competitor. I asked why they chose the competition and, in so many words, he told me that my competitor stayed engaged and sold them on their solution. 

I was mad at myself (and so was my management) for making such a rookie mistake – I quit selling!

From then on, I made sure that I never quit selling to any customer, even if a program was cancelled. 

That discipline paid off two years later when I closed the biggest software sale of my career, and the biggest one that company had that year – all because I stayed engaged with a customer that had another competitor’s solution selected and their customer didn’t like it. 

Because I was in contact on a frequent basis even after we weren't selected, they called me back and 19 months later I closed the deal.

As I learned more about the trade of selling I have made many other mistakes since ‘the one that got away’. I learned the hard way that in the field of sales 

– Never Quit Selling!

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you with your sales force, or with any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2013 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.