What’s in your value proposition? Can you explain in clear terms what you’ll do (and what you won’t do) and how it benefits you? Can you explain in terms your customer will understand why people choose you over the competition and how they’re better off, because they did?

Here’s a list of questions entrepreneurs or business leaders might usefully ask themselves. A compilation of the answers could add up to a credible value proposition. That makes a great start to any business plan, marketing brief or even customer pitch.

It’ll also make a great series of posts in our company blogs – so I’d better get on with that. How about you?

As always Seth Godin has a way of explaining the most complex ideas in terms anybody can understand. The complex idea of course is the value proposition. The simple terms are Seth’s 16 questions.

16 questions for free agents

If you’re starting out as an entrepreneur or a freelancer or a project manager, the most important choice you’ll make is: what to do? As in the answer to the question, “what do you do?”

Some questions to help you get started:

1. Who are you trying to please?
2. Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?
3. How will the world be different when you’ve succeeded?
4. Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?
5. Do you want a team? How big? (I know, that’s two questions)
6. Would you rather have an open-ended project that’s never done, or one where you hit natural end points? (How high is high enough?)
7. Are you prepared to actively sell your stuff, or are you expecting that buyers will walk in the door and ask for it?
8. Which: to invent a category or to be just like Bob/Sue, but better?
9. If you take someone else’s investment, are you prepared to sell out to pay it back?
10. Are you done personally growing, or is this project going to force you to change and develop yourself?
11. Choose: teach and lead and challenge your customers, or do what they ask…
12. How long can you wait before it feels as though you’re succeeding?
13. Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)
14. Do you want your customers to know each other (a tribe) or is it better they be anonymous and separate?
15. How close to failure, wipe out and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we’re on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)
16. What does busy look like?

In my experience, people skip all of these questions and ask instead: “What can I do that will be sure to work?” The problem, of course, is that there is no sure, and even worse, that you and I have no agreement at all on what it means for something to work.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Posted via web from stevensreeves

You Might Also Enjoy

• Seth’s Blog: The modern business plan
• Planning for Success Starting a Business
• Learning Business Lessons from the Golf Caddie
• Difference Between Employee, Contractor and Contract

Did You Get Your Front Office Box?
Register today, Get Started with the management tool that works your way

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

June 3rd, 2010 - Posted in Starting a business  |  Add a Comment Starting a business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. -->