Everyone wants to make useful things. It’s pretty obvious. Why? Because things that add real value sell. In the long run.

And that’s good business.

You can, if you really want to, build something on the spur of the moment, exploit a fad, make something that sells fast and you can also make some good money out of it.

But, as much as you can temporarily fool someone into believing you, it’s pretty hard to keep a lie going for very long.

Also, lying to people is just bad practice. So that we are aligned on that.

So, if you want your business to flourish for more that a little while you have to develop something people really want. And people really want things that matter to them.

Nice, so — how do we do that? How do we build things people want? There’s literally been countless pieces of content produced on this. Arguments, books, thesis, best practices and case studies came before this. In the same way as there is one recipe for making a particular cake but every cook is at least tempted to add their twist on it and every grandma has one version that she has perfected over the years; this is my current interpretation of what building a Value Proposition means. It is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a definitive guide and it will forever be - in true agile fashion - always subject to change and improvements over time. Just like a good cake recipe.

Some different cakes to illustrate the point above.

My current Value Proposition development recipe is made of 5 steps:

Look around and listen
Define your purpose
Find out why anyone would care about it
Prove that people should
Make your mark

I am going to make a start in explaining each of them in some more detail in this article but you should know that each step, like a complex cooking technique, requires practice and time to master on it’s one and deserves a dedicated coverage on it’s own.

Look around and listen

This is the first and most important step. Literally. There is no innovation which hasn’t come from looking at an existing challenge with new eyes. Maybe those are the eyes made possible by a new technology, those widened by the discovery of a new need or lit by a new passion. Regardless, first and foremost you should always look. Out. Very few people can find great insights looking only at themselves. Those people are true — once in a generation, geniuses. I am not and so I have to look outside for inspiration. I found this to be best practice that works better in most situations.

There are ways in which the collection of these observation can be structured. Specifically you want to strengthen your skills on:

how to gather and interpret data
how to define the right audience
how to make a strong hypothesis

It’s quite a common say to state that the best people are not the people with the best answers but rather those with the best questions. This has proven to be very much true in my experience. Practice asking the right question to the right audience at the right time; find out new ones and relook at old ones and, if you can, try to find that question no one has yet to think of.

Define your purpose

What is it that you can do for your audience? In order to answer this question better it is always helpful to know more about what your audience is busy with. What are they trying to do? Why? What are their objectives? Their motivations? What’s bothering them? What are their expectations?

Also, remember, nothing happens in a void. If you are thinking about building something there is a fairly good chance that someone has already built something similar. Look at what they are doing! Steal like an artist. Look at others, make them better.

At the end of this step you should be able to:

have enough research on your audience and their needs
have a clear picture of your competitive landscape
have an idea of what is the area you will be exploring further in this space and how you could be helping there

Find out why anyone would care about it

Good question. I mean, another cliché, but there’s so much content and so little attention out there. Why would anyone spend time even looking at anything you’d be doing?

The single biggest lesson I’ve learned in my years working in marketing is right here: no one cares. About you. No one. People care about how you can help them solve their issues. They care about what you can do for them. Not what you have done for yourself. It’s not rocket science right? Yet, you’d be surprised at the number of companies putting out claims about how much “we are the leading blah in blah” or “we have the best this and that”. No one cares. As a consumer, I want to know how your leadership position is going to help me how your technology is going to make my life easier. “Just do it”, “Enjoy”, “Think Different”, “Belong Anywhere”, noticed who’s the subject in those lines? The reader, never the writer.

So, how do you find out that people want to “just do” something? Start by:

Defining your solution better
Build an MVP and listen to the feedback
Make a unique promise in relation to your audience needs

Prove that people should believe you

So, now that you’ve managed to convince me that someone cares about what you have to say, you need to prove that I should. You need to earn the right to keep talking to me. Time is a very precious resource, no one wants to waste it on some empty promises. So, do your homework and prove that you’re worthy of my attention.

In practice:

validate all your hypothesis
keep learning, improving and listening to the feedback
make a claim worthy of this name with some strong reasons to believe it behind

Make it yours

Last bit. Home stretch. Now you know what you are building, why, for who and maybe even how you are going to make it a success. Too bad no one knows about it yet. Internally and externally that is. You need to sell. Yes, I know, despicable. Still, you need to sell.

Your value proposition should be a North Star direction for your Company, a positioning that everyone can accept and that anyone would be willing to get behind. You need to rally the troops with this sh*t so it better be solid. Your internal stakeholders take absolutely zero time in calling out a bluff.

Then you need to do the same for your market. Make a statement, be out there, make a splash. Speak but, whatever you do, never ever stop listening as it’s the only way for you to know that what you are doing is not useless after all. The world is full of nicely designed business cases that never see the light of day and mega-fancy campaigns that no one ever gave a damn about. No amount of carefully selected data, no pretty font or witty tagline can ever substitute building something of actual value.

There you have it. The outline of my recipe. Feel free to thinker with it, expand it, change it, make it better.

Reframe it for your ingredients and your taste, it is your kitchen after all