value proposition examples and templates

Your value proposition is the first, and often the only, opportunity you have to make an impression on a prospective customer, user, or investor.

Research shows that the attention span of a person may be as short as 8 seconds before their mind starts wandering. On average, 8 out of 10 people will read your headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest of your copy.

Without a value proposition that grabs their interest, you may as well save yourself the trouble of presenting the rest. So, how do you write a compelling pitch that flips people’s attention?

Since readers seemed to find my 7 Proven Templates For Writing Value Propositions That Work useful for creating value propositions, I thought I’d share 3 more templates and examples.

#1 Clay Christensen’s Jobs-to-be-done

According to Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen, designing an innovative customer value proposition begins with genuinely understanding the customer’s jobs-to-be-done (JTBD).

JTBD is not a product, service, or a specific solution; it’s the higher purpose for which customers buy products, services, and solutions. Its premise is that customers don’t really buy products. They “hire” them to do a job. Instead of asking what products customers want to buy, the JTBD method asks what fundamental problems they hope to address.

The authors of The Innovator’s Toolkit suggest using a “job statement” to describe a JTBD.

Template

Action verb: _________

Object of action: _________

Contextual identifier: _________.

Sample(s)

“Manage (action verb) personal finances (object of action) at home (contextual identifier)”.

“Preserving fun memories.” (Kodak’s Funsaver)

“Listen to music while jogging.”

#2 Simon Sinek’s WHY

According to Simon Sinek, “People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.” Sinek’s Golden Circle framework shows you how to turn an idea into a social movement by leading a focus on WHY.

This step-by-step process teaches you to clarify your Why, articulate your Hows, and the importance of being consistent in What you do.

Template

Why: ___________

How: ___________

What: ___________

Sample(s)

Why: In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.

How: The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly.

What: We just happen to make computers.

#3 The Minto Pyramid aka SCQA

SCQA – Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer – also known as The Minto Pyramid Principle, helps you organize ideas to write compelling business documents. It be memos, presentations, emails, blog posts or – key to all the former – value propositions.

Template

Situation – describe what is the current situation

Complication – describe the issue in the situation

Question – describe the question in response to the issue

Answer  - suggest answer to ease out or mitigate the issue

Sample(s)

With the rise of smartphones and online video the use of data has exploded.

As a result, however, wireless networks become congested and slow.

How can mobile operators increase their quality of service?

Our patented routing algorithm helps mobile operators radically increase throughput.

Want to more? See my post on 7 Proven Templates and Examples For Writing Value Propositions That Work or subscribe to get tips and tricks in your inbox.

{ 0 comments }

startup co-founder thievesWTF!?, I cried as I discovered that half of all the company’s cash equivalents had been withdrawn from its bank account. But when I found out who had made the withdrawal, I realized we had not been screwed. We had been robbed. The investors’ money, my face. It was gone.

A short week earlier the company had held a board meeting. The director of the board and my partner (who I will keep anonymous) had naturally resigned, arguing that he wanted to focus on private matters. The board had been discussing the change of board seats and settlements, but disagreed. I have never ever witnessed such an unprofessional behavior from anyone I’ve trusted in business.

Continue reading..

{ 14 comments }

Business Model Canvas for WordPress

Business Model Press is based on Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.

Blogging is not only useful for introducing ideas. It’s also the primary way many companies communicate with and get feedback from their customers – making blogging a killer opportunity for business model- and customer development.

After having more than 100 students and 20 startup teams doing exactly that – blog their business model – I learned that it helped the teams systemize collaboration, speed up the learning process, get going with customer development and more quickly take action on their business model assumptions.

Yet, the teams still had to download the business model canvas, convert it into a picture, upload it to PowerPoint, take notes on top of it, and store it as a new picture. Following, they had to upload, resize, and import it to the editorial before finally publishing – and repeat for each and every iteration of the business model. Not very efficient.

Continue reading..

{ 32 comments }

Norwegian Startup Troll

See the full article on ArcticStartup.

TechCrunch recently published a timely article questioning if Norway is leaving its tech startups out in the cold. Here’s why the discussion needs another angle and the problem in fact is the problem.

Mike Butcher starts out comparing the ones of Spotify, Rovio, Tradeshift, and Everbread to the lack of evidence of successful startups from Norway, even pondering upon Opera as a half-fledged success. The arguments are as half the truth as pointing at Bipper and Wonderloop (both Norwegian semi-expats) as examples of the opposite.

Continue reading..

{ 6 comments }

Value Proposition Examples and Templates You already know that getting your value proposition right is critical to your business model. You can have the best features, the most perfectly executed presentation, the most stunning price, but no one will ever know of it if they don’t get past your high-level value proposition.

But how do you craft such a pitch?

Continuously looking to perfect your value proposition you’d consult lengthy articles only to find that there’s a jungle of advise out there. What you need are applicable examples from entrepreneurs and investors who have successfully given and taken thousands of pitches, right?

So I’ve put together 7 proven templates that are designed to help you create a clear, compelling value proposition in minutes.

#1 Geoff Moore’s Value Positioning Statement

Probably the most recognized one –  in his seminal book Crossing the Chasm – Geoff Moore suggests a specific template for creating your value positioning. In addition to the first part below he also introduces a second statement focused on competitive positioning (see for your self).

Template

For  ____________ (target customer)

who ____________  (statement of the need or opportunity)

our (product/service name) is  ____________  (product category)

that (statement of benefit) ____________ .

Sample(s)

For non-technical marketers

who struggle to find return on investment in social media

our product is a web-based analytics software that translates engagement metrics into actionable revenue metrics.

[click to continue…]

{ 35 comments }

This collection includes the early websites of Facebook (still with the The), 37signals, LinkedIn (not that bad in fact), eBay (without the pictures I’m afraid), Twitter (probably the first sketch), and more. Note that some may miss CSS and therefore may not display identical to the original.

If “preach what you teach” still holds, this better be a minimum viable blog post. As far as I put the slide deck together in under 1o minutes, did the research for it during a quick train trip this morning, and publish this as soon as possible (even if it’s a bad time to post), it would need iterations..

Continue reading..

{ 1 comment }