I came across a Linkedin comment from Ben Wright recently which I thought was spot on and hence am reproducing it here in full, with commentary after.

+++

Your Value Proposition

Building a compelling value proposition for your prospects is really simple. You just need to ask FOUR questions.

The scary thing is, many sales reps and sales leaders never ask these questions.

How often do YOU ask these questions?

1. What PAIN do they have?

What PAIN exists within their organisation that they’re trying to solve? How many different layers of PAIN can you uncover? How does this differ for each stakeholder? How much detail can you uncover about each of their PAINS?

2. How much does this PAIN cost them?

What’s the financial consequence of this pain and impact on their KPIs? What questions can you ask around the PAIN and what assumptions can you make (e.g. about salaries or expenditure) to create a rough calculation of this cost? How does this differ for each stakeholder?

3. What is at stake if they cannot solve this PAIN?

At the individual, department and company level, what happens if they can’t solve this PAIN?

4. How much VALUE do you create by taking away this PAIN?

What VALUE do you create at the individual, department and organisational level by taking this PAIN away.

You have to ask these questions again and again for each stakeholder until you have as complete a picture as possible about PAIN and VALUE.

What other questions would you ask?

++++

My Thoughts:

Reflecting on the post I think it is a great way of thinking about what your software is attempting to solve for.? When you solve for a pain you are solving for a need to have rather than a nice to have.

Pain comes in many forms:

How acute is it?

How frequent is it? Once a year or daily?

Is it pain just for the target buyer or does it impact the entire company?

How does the pain manifest itself ?

driving additional cost

taking too much time
increasing the velocity of errors etc

Thinking about how you solve for a pain ensures your value proposition is a compelling one - but that pain needs to be articulated by your ideal customer profiles / buyer personas and not just be based on assumptions by you or your team.