Whether you are selling a business service, a new type of smart phone, a revolutionary airplane or a powerful new software application, the "tightness" or completeness of your value proposition is the single most important component of go-to-market readiness that you can shape and control. Yet, many companies fail to do just that.



Fortune 500 companies allocate massive resources to achieve ever-growing financial and market-share objectives. For smaller companies, the challenges are much greater and the stakes are higher as survival often depends on current marketing and sales programs. Often, smaller companies find that an outright lack of budget or skilled resources in corporate marketing, sales, product management and operations and a lack of integration among those areas hinder their efforts to grow sales and add new customers.

More important than the concept of what you're offering and to whom, are the carefully chosen words used to convey that offer so others may understand and see its importance. These words support your advertising and marketing materials and they are the words your sales teams have to understand in order to connect powerfully with your clients and prospects.

This matters because there are just too many words in circulation!

Dawn Hudson, Senior VP of Marketing for Pepsi put it this way, "The average American receives more than 3,000 marketing messages a day." Marketing messages have unavoidably crept into almost every second of everyone's day and are part of almost all your activities. Marketing messages bombard us from every direction. And -- you need to create and deliver your own messages to your target prospects.

Yes, messaging is everywhere: yours and your competitors.

On today's fast-paced business railway, a novel idea by itself is not enough to let you board the train. Speed and message execution (getting the structure and nuance of messaging right) are just as important, if not more so. Introducing new products and services to new markets can be like jumping on a moving train: it's hard to do and can result in injury, dismemberment or death—to your bottom line.

So, how will your company's voice stand out in this overwhelming chorus of messages?

Your success hinges not only on the inherent quality of your product or service (the so-called "better mousetrap"), but also the ability to move swiftly, integrate resources and execute go-to-market tasks effectively and efficiently with a coherent and compelling "message platform" or a clear internal road map describing your products and services from three perspectives:

a. Strategically: what your company wants to achieve with the product.

b. Marketing: how you describe your product on the web and in your marketing collateral.

c. Sales: how sales "connects the dots" on the value you offer customers.

The bottom line: create a message platform to consistently communicate your offering and reach your target market with a consistent marketing and sales effort.

A Five Point Plan for Creating an Effective Message Platform:

1. Start with the truth: The fact that you have something of value for your customer is the basis of your business. If a product isn't distinct in some meaningful way, little else will help. However, being great is not enough. Even being the greatest is not enough. The imperative for today's companies is to build a stellar message to represent your stellar product in the marketplace. Again, this is not just "spin," as long as you start with something of real value - so, start with the truth!

2. Discover your REAL value: The essence of discovering your value is to look at all the interconnected parts of what you are selling. Namely, the products, services, support and anything else that a buyer will experience and associate with your offering. There are many steps along the way for a company to add value to a product before a buyer receives and uses it—and you have to be able to do so profitably. Ask, what is it in your overall "value chain" that really offers a distinct benefit to your customers?

3. Think like your customers: To think like your customers you must first ask your customers what they want and need. More importantly, ask them what frustrates them. Not just in general, but about providers in your industry, and most importantly, about what frustrates them about your company and its offerings. It might not be pleasant, but it is essential to break into the hearts and minds of potential buyers.

4. Test, test, test: As you develop your strategy, messaging, sales and marketing programs, the key to success is to test everything! Advertising and promotion, as well as direct sales campaigns can be measured and tracked easily - whether by using intricate tools or a simple pen and paper. Don't guess that a new tag line is working for you or if a lead-gen campaign is better than last year's. You don't have to become a statistician, but commit to examine what you do, ask questions and refine, refine, refine as you test, test, test.

5. Simplify for understanding: Reduce the number of features or benefits in your story. Don't reduce the actual features that make up your offering, but reduce the number of features you communicate. Reducing the number of features communicated, forces you to evaluate which features really matter to prospects and enables you to deliver those points more clearly.

It is easy to feel that "more is more," but given the crowded marketplace and ever increasing levels of market noise, you must deliver a simply understood story to your market. The more complex the product, the less likely it is to effectively deliver the proverbial "fire hose" of information to an already message saturated audience.