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In my previous articles, I took some more fundamental IT theory and applied it (for better or worse) to SEO. As part of an occasional series, I’m going to pull it up out of the weeds a little bit and focus more on project sales and delivery from my own experience and perspective. My hope is that my own recollections can spur some conversation from readers about their good and bad experiences and that we can all learn a little bit in the process. So without further ado, I give you Part 1:
Know Thyself
Clients are generally smart people. This is something that many professionals in service delivery choose to ignore. In any given proposal process, you may have 10 people on a selection committee, and you may successfully BS 8 of them. But there’s always going to be 1 or 2 naturally cynical people, who through that cynicism fulfill the blind squirrel-nut theory. Keep in mind that during this process, you’ll be standing in a room explaining to this group why your product is the best for them, why the organization can’t get your skills anywhere else, and why they should pay a premium for an outsider to come in rather than do the work in-house.
Based on past experience, “The 8″ (as I’ll henceforth call them) are probably mid-to-upper/executive management from all business process areas. Strategic thinkers interested in the long-term and the financial in nature. “The 2″ are probably direct reports or low-to-mid management. They will be impacted most immediately and on a larger scale than “The 8″. They’re tactical thinkers, interested in day-to-day operations. How do you reach both groups, sell your services, foster partnership, and, hopefully, reap benefits for both parties?
The Value Proposition
Developing a value proposition is one of the most important and time consuming activities a service provider can do. Significant thought needs to go into first deciding what it is that you’ll do, then deciding how you’ll do it. And all the while, you need to be able to articulate how what you offer and how you offer it will provide benefit to the client in a way that separates you from your competition. For established providers, the value prop is easier to articulate and has probably evolved over time. For a startup, it can be daunting.
And so it comes back to the old adage, “Know Thyself”. It can be tempting as a startup to say “We need clients, so we’ll do whatever they want us to do and hopefully something will stick.” But that can lead to an identity crisis for the organization and can distract it from doing what it’s good at or what the original intent was. So how can you develop a value proposition that you can stand behind and can win work.
- What the organization does?
This should be a straightforward, simple sentence (think nouns and verbs with as few ad-words as possible). “ElectronSEO enables clients to better reach and retain customers by…”
- How the organization does what they do?
This should contain the services you provide at a high level. Things like copywriting, linking strategies, reciprocal agreements, website design, etc.
- What are the benefits to the organization?
At this point, you may be tempted to put in some bulletpoints you found on the net about potential gains a client can achieve. But this should be at a higher level. You don’t want to start promising specifics that will never be met. Statements suitable for this can be “Measurable increase in website traffic” or “Enhanced search engine results”. It may seem like a cop out, but it can save you from legal issues down the road.
With a well-developed value proposition, you can be better equipped to respond to RFP’s or to cold-sell your services to an organization. Research will aid you in tailoring the value prop to the specific needs of the organization so that both “The 8″ and “The 2″ will be in your camp.
What are your experiences? Have you been involved in a selection process and one of your potential partners couldn’t tell what they did to save their life? Have you developed a value proposition that worked on the first try or took multiple iterations to get right? Let’s hear your thoughts.