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AUGUST 2006
5 Simple Steps to Building Your Value Proposition
Hopefully you have been following along over the past several months as I have walked through the need to change your message. Every day people struggle to connect with decision makers simply because they have nothing important to say. In this letter I want to share a simple formula for getting the meeting off on the right track. Take this outline and begin drafting a great message; one that resonates with the people that make buying decisions.
The following steps have been designed to help you move from a product pitch to a dialogue. In past letters I have emphasized the need to focus on buyers with business issues, reiterating the importance of establishing a peer level relationship at this level. Use these points to create an effective introduction that will lead into dialogue; taking you from presenting to interacting.
1. Trends
Everyone likes news! We tune into radio and television news, read newspapers and magazines, and even sign up for RSS feeds from our favorite services. There never seems to be enough news. A topic like security is full of great news and can be used to get almost anyone's attention. I am not referring to scare tactics here, but rather bringing relevant news to your prospects. As a solution provider partnering with global companies such as Cisco, IBM, HP, EMC, and others, you should be bringing global perspective based on what you and your partners are seeing around the world. In the security space, with reports of organized crime, ID theft, and threats of cyber war, insider news can be a great place to start. The purpose of doing this is simple but critical - take the focus off of the product, and refocus on the assets of that business.
2. What I see
The assets are the data...Given the growing threats, what impact are you seeing? Your clients want to know what their peers are doing, what their competition is facing, and how security threats are impacting like industries. With the small amount of collaboration that takes place on the business side of these security issues, company executives are frequently ignorant of what is really happening out there. What do you see? Companies are losing data every day despite the enormous investments some of them have in security. In 2005 www.IDTheftCenter.Com reported data losses in large companies including FDIC, Citicorp, Wachovia, and 134 organizations. They cited companies you would consider safe, but yet every company lost critical identity records.
3. My Concern
What is your concern; your humanitarian concern. So many people are experiencing identity theft,while large companies are losing the trust of their customers, and all of us are wondering how to really protect ourselves. My concern is that no one really knows whose identity is being stolen. Its a surreptitious attack that is being ignored by managers who are on the lookout for the next big virus. Someone has to do something to regain control is this issue.
4. What we are doing about it
Hopefully you are doing something about it! Most major technology manufacturers are. Whether it is taking steps to build security into the network such as Cisco and Juniper, Microsoft working on a more secure operating system, companies such as EMC delivering access control, business continuity, and secure data management, or taking on a holistic approach to security from the end-user to the database (McAfee or Symantec), product makers are addressing these issues. Your expertise to uncover issues through risk assessment work can help companies understand what their exposure is. Having the ability to deliver risk reporting to data owners is worth a lot right now.
5. Specific to you
So what are you clients doing to grow their business and how much risk are they introducing? Sending sales teams out with laptops puts confidential data at risk, accessing email from coffee shops, hotels, and airports may be sending their information out in the clear, and even making a phone call or leaving a vmail over an IP network creates digital assets that can be recorded and used for illegal purposes. Given these things, would your prospect be willing to sit down for thirty minutes and hear your ideas on how to enable their business; extending the enterprise further into new markets? If you could measure their risk, and show them how to cost effectively reduce it, would they give you a few minutes? My experience shows that they will. |
