“Describe your agency for me…”, the potential client says. For some reason, you’re caught totally off guard by how broad the question seems, you start talking at speed and veer off on a wild tangent and slowly, the wheels start to come off.
But that question doesn’t have to be so hard. If you’ve spent time developing your proposition, then you’ll already have the best answer.
If you haven’t, now is the time to fix that. Your value proposition is how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. It’s what clients will use to qualify you, so it’s important to have this in place.
Your proposition should focus on your audience and seeing things through their eyes. Try to put your audience in the centre of your proposition (rather than your agency) and this will help you create that WOW Factor (as I’ve called it before). This paints a clear picture of ‘what’s in it for me’ for the marketeer or decision maker you’re pitching to. You need to connect the dots for them.
When building your proposition, make sure you:
- Articulate what you do, how you do it and why you do it: this might seem obvious, but it can be harder than you think to boil down into a bite sized chunk.
- Pull out what makes you special: what is it about your approach, your people, your work, that makes you different to your competitors?
- Know your worth: what value do you bring to your clients every day? Where do your strengths lie? How will these add to the lives of new potential clients?
- Are clear about who you are there to support: who is your target audience, what do these potential customers want, what do they value, and how can you help with that. Get this right and you’ll start to attract the clients that are best suited to you.
- Have back up: sense-check whether this is the kind of thing your existing clients would say freely about working with you? You might want to survey existing clients and get their views. A proposition has no value unless it’s authentic.
It’s funny isn’t it? We spend so much time supporting clients on building propositions but yet we don’t take time to do it for ourselves. Make sure you take time to create yours and pause to review it every so often. Keep it fresh and feel confident that it’s a good reflection of who you are.
If you need support building your killer proposition, then please don’t hesitate to reach out natasha@thehand.fandftesting.com.
