Bill Wishon’s News and Views

Yesterday I went to another in a series of Product Management related breakfast discussions, the last one was on The Philosophy of Product, this one was about creating a value proposition.  Once again Ellen Grace was an excellent host and facilitator of a great conversation.

Here are some of the key take-aways I had from this discussion:

A value proposition is a multi-layered and multi-faceted thing.  Depending on what level you are at and what view you take the answer to “what is the value proposition?” may be very different.

• Multi-layered in that there are different levels of detail you use.
  • Market
  • Brand
  • Company
  • Product
  • Feature
• Multi-faceted in that there are different views or portals through which you need to look at a value proposition depending on the context and audience.
  • Business owner
  • Technical owner
  • Consumer / end-user
  • Purchasing department
  • Channel
  • Integrator

There are some things that a new value propisition will not change, and knowing ahead of time what those are is key to creating a value proposition that will work.

• Corporate culture
• Core compitency

A value proposition is like a press relationship message.  You can’t have too many, 3 or less is a good rule of thumb.  So whatever context, level and audience you have the value proposition has to be concise.  In my own experience simply eliminating value proposition statements and angles that were less effective added to the effectivity of the other remaining statements.

Tips and tricks

• Interview the company team members to understand what facets of the value proposition are resonating and working with customers, the market, analysts and press.  There may be some common themes that rise to the top.
• Perform win-loss analysis to learn what messages and propositions were effective and which weren’t
• Host a cross-functional brainstorms to get different groups thinking about the business / product from the perspective of the other groups within the company.  Having a meeting facilitator that can hold 1 on 1 pre-meetings to preflight any potentially sticky issues between groups can make things go even better.