What steps do you take to ensure your messaging is clearly communicating the value prop?

Generally my approach to this is to build a plan on how to socialize and get feedback. Ensuring that key stakeholders have time to review, provide input, edits, etc. will help refine and reinforce whether or not you're communicating the value prop.

XFN teams that are critical:

• Sales: is the messaging clear and concise? Do they understand the unique selling points of the product/service/software they're trying to sell?

• Subject matter experts: is there authenticity to the messaging? Is it hitting on the right pain points/challenges they're experiencing?

• Product team: to ensure that that's what they're building/accurately depicting what its solving for

Obviously you want to set guardrails on the type of feedback you're looking - so as you engage with these teams, be explicit with what you're looking for and set expectations on what feedback will/can be integrated. For example, to avoid too many opinions, suggestions, etc., you can let them know beforehand that you're not looking for wordsmitting but rather feedback on whether the message effectively communicates what your product is trying to solve.

Testing it with peers, sales and customers. When you are spending a lot of time working on a message, you will end up being too close to it and you wont be able to see alternative point of views. You can do it two ways:

1. Give the pitch with no context and ask what the value props are afterwards

2. Tell them what you are trying to accomplish, give pitch and discuss how it hit or missed the mark.

Value props are directly linked to customer pain. If you truly understand the pain you are solving for (through customer, prospect and market research) then you can take that pain and map it to how your product or solution solves that pain - which is your value prop.

Clearly communicating those value props also requires that you state your value in a way that is tied to the impact the customer can expect from using your product, and how your product solves their pain in a way that competitors can not (differentiation).

Revisit, revisit, and revisit some more! Review it yourself multiple times. Share options with customers. Get opinions from potential customers. Get feedback internally. Review your competitors. Focus on one thing at a time and keep the language as concise as possible.

You may only know this by testing it with your target audience. Doing it in a vacuum in PMM or with product or sales will almost never work. Try message testing services like Wynter, send out surveys to existing users, or add a “marketing” section to your next Customer Advisory Board meeting.