Define Who You Are: Creating an Effective Value Proposition

When talking to a prospect, what answer do you give when they ask, “What do you do?” This simple question can be tough to answer when you consider every aspect of your offering: hardware, software, supplies, and services.

In the few seconds of attention we have with a prospect, whether face-to-face, on the phone or through a website, we must be able to clearly communicate what we do and how the prospect could benefit. Otherwise, we lose their attention.

Without a clear value proposition, sale reps generally gravitate to their area of comfort by saying, “We do copiers.” As a result, the incredible value of your managed IT program rarely gets shared. At the same time, you don’t want to throw the proverbial hardware baby out with the managed-IT bath water—you can’t alienate your core business.

To succeed in managed IT, you need to develop a broader value proposition that clearly explains all of the benefits you bring to clients.

What Is a Value Proposition?

A value proposition is a short statement that expresses what you do and how your clients benefit.

Your value proposition should be compressed to one sentence. You’ll probably start with a list or a paragraph, but keep working on it until you edit it down. Eventually, you might be able to condense it down to a few words. This hard work is worth the time, because it creates a basis to invite prospects to learn more.

How to Get Started

When it comes to creating a unified value proposition that includes hardware, services, and/or solutions it’s helpful to consider two things:

• What do your prospects want?
• What do you really do for clients?

What Do Prospects Want?

When it comes to technology, here are some broad categories of the things prospects want from a technology partner:

• • Support
    • Minimal downtime
    • Simplicity
    • A partner who responds to service issues
  • Productivity
    • Streamlined workflows
    • Improved collaboration
  • Security
    • Reduced security risk
    • Reduced compliance risk
  • Advice
    • Technology strategy
  • Personal Advancement
    • Happy coworkers
    • Career advancement

Start by making a list of the core things your clients want. To focus this exercise, think of your ideal clients—the ones you wish you had a hundred more just like them. Think about their benefits of working with you. If you don’t know what they are, ask them:

• What do you like best about working with our dealership?
• What are the top benefits you realize from working with us?

The answers to these questions will give you insight into what needs to be in your value proposition.

What Do You Do?

This question seems simple, and for years it was, “We sell and service copiers.”

Over time, the answer has become more complicated. Many dealerships got into the document management business. Others expanded their hardware portfolios to include production, wide-format, 3D and label printing. Some moved into adjacent markets like mailing equipment, telephony and water systems. Most developed MPS practices.

Write down everything your dealership offers on a whiteboard. What similarities do you see?

Look at most dealerships and you’ll find one of two common themes:

1. Service: We service technology
2. Workflow: We improve workflow or productivity

These two high-level categories can provide the direction for your unified value proposition. Let’s consider both.

The Service-Value Prop

Your dealership has provided responsive technology service for years. It started years ago with providing copier service. Maybe you even have a dealership that provided service to typewriters long before the copier was invented. Then, you decided to service printers as you got into the managed print services business. Now your service offering includes the entire network.

Essentially, your dealership supports technology for local business.

However, now you do more than just respond to emergencies—you take a proactive approach. It began with MPS, as you started proactively monitoring printer networks and getting remote meter readings. It continues into managed IT services in which you monitor networks.

The unique aspect of your service value proposition is that you identify and resolve issues before they become business problems.

This creates a powerful value proposition for today’s businesses. With so much of our daily operations depending on technology, downtime can be catastrophic. Proactively monitoring technology along with providing responsive field support when necessary allows your prospects to stay productive.

With this in mind, your service-centered value proposition could be something like:

• We proactively monitor and support technology so your company can stay online, productive, and secure.
• We focus on keeping your technology online, so you can focus on growing your business.

“Oh, that sounds interesting, tell me more.” And now you have the invitation to share your service philosophy and all of the systems you support.

The Workflow-Value Prop

Since the days of copiers, faxes, and scanners, you have been a part of workflow. After all, documents are the vehicles by which information flows through business process.

Today’s multifunction systems allow customers to streamline the flow of information, providing a gateway to move documents between paper and digital formats. Combined with customized apps and third-party workflow and content-management solutions, you have the ability to improve your clients’ productivity.

From this perspective, your unique value proposition relates to improving business processes. You might say something like:

• We help businesses integrate technology to streamline workflow, improve productivity and increase security.
• From paper documents to cloud services, we help businesses streamline their business processes.
• We help businesses improve collaboration, increase productivity and enhance security by integrating technology to improve workflow.

Do We Have to Pick?

Your value proposition certainly needs to be clear. However, there is still a way to highlight all you do.

If you use the proactive service as the core of your value proposition, you can continue by showing how keeping systems online results in improved security, productivity and collaboration.

If you use improved workflow as the core of your value proposition, you can explain that you back it up with proactive service to ensure the systems stay online.

What’s Your Value Proposition?

This is a critical question to answer. If your top leadership, sales reps and everyone else at the dealership can’t answer it, you’re going to remain stuck in your legacy business, frustrated with the lack of growth in your new areas.

As I work with clients to develop their value proposition, it’s amazing to” see the lights come on” when we find something that fits. In many cases, you know you have it because it fits comfortably into conversations with clients and prospects.

Take the time to do this and you’ll unlock growth in these important new business areas.