Tag Archives: Value proposition


It’s the sizzle that sells the steak…not the cow.

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

A friend of mine sent me a video by email last week that, as a marketer, I loved. It was one of those ‘old school’ videos featuring “America’s best salesman”…Elmer Wheeler, who’s message is as relevant and meaningful today as it was when he delivered in the 60’s. After watching it a number of times, and because of the subject matter, it made me think of an interesting way to look at what the brand experience is all about.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW6HmQ1QVMw]

So here goes:

Imagine that you and your significant other decide to go to a well-known, fancy-schmancy steakhouse for a special night out dinner. Have that in your mind? Good. Now, picture another steakhouse of similar reputation. Both of the steakhouses prepare the same quality of steak but with one difference….. whereas the first restaurant makes a steak the way it’s supposed to be made (a thick clean cut, placed on the center of the plate) and presented with some tasty vegetables nicely positioned on the side and professionally put on the table, the second restaurant has a similar plate presentation but with no steak on it. Their steak gets delivered just a minute later on a hot stone tablet to your table…simmering and sizzling. The waitress presents the steak with elegance, and sprinkles some salt and pepper on top. While the aroma of the steak makes your mouth start to water and the sizzle gets your full attention, she begins to tell the story of the family who own the vineyard of the wine you selected. What a different brand experience that is! Same item, same quality, different way to engage the consumer. The difference isn’t about the steak but rather about the sizzle.

So why does the “sizzle” matter?

1. Anyone can make good steak

As we know, product or service quality is a fragile thing. No matter how many patents you have, how well you have integrated your supply chain and perfected your quality standards, no matter how much money you spend on R&D, anyone who really, really wants to go after you will eventually copy what you do or make and perhaps even perfect the product you so passionately protected.

2. The sizzle is a difficult thing to copy

Branding, brand equity and brand engagement are difficult to copy. They are strongly linked to your brand, and your brand alone. The depth of everything “surrounding” the product is complex, deep and interwoven with stories, emotions, associations, you name it…all those good things that make a brand unique!

3.      The sizzle adds the emotional layer

Back to the restaurant example: Guess what? People will come back for more. Not just for the steak, but for the feeling they get when they are IN that experience. Human beings thrive on emotions, and seek repeat of pleasure.

Now, I’m not suggesting for one minute to only focus on the sizzle. Without that good, juicy, perfectly cut and excellently cooked filet mignon steak there is no reason to add sizzle in the first place! The sizzle is the icing on the cake; without cake there is no need for the icing.

Selling the sizzle and not the steak is something good marketers have known since forever. Give your customers the meal that they desire…and they will come back for it time and time again.

Read before Burning – Ten Tidbits to Turnarounds

by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change (c) 2012

I’m not sure about you, but in the deluge of emails that comes my way each and every day, it’s real easy start deleting them without even thinking about whether there’s content that might make my life and that of my clients easier and better. So, I stopped doing that about 6 months ago and now take the time to open each one and at the very least scan for interesting info. Maybe I’ll see something about trends, or research data, facts, or a tidbit about helpful hints. Without doing so, I’d miss out on stuff I should know about and, respectfully said, that’s probably the case with you as well.

Well, with your indulgence, I wanted to share with you 10 pieces of information that you may not be aware of which in turn will help you grow your business by seizing on untapped revenue-producing opportunities. So, here goes:

  • Recent stats released by Google show that 1 in 7 searches originate on a mobile device and of those, 1 in 3 are looking for a local business.  A report from IDC last spring forecasts that search traffic from mobile will surpass desktop and laptop based search in the next 2½ years.  With search and traffic trending toward mobile, what are you doing to ensure your online properties are constructed to support and look good on mobile devices? Opportunities could be lost otherwise.
  • Are you having trouble finding content for your blog and newsletters? Luckily, there is a host of free tools that can make finding content for your blog or email newsletter easier, regardless of the topic. But before you start using these tools, you’ll need a list of keywords related to your hot topics. The five free content sources that can inspire ideas for your email newsletters, blog posts, articles and other marketing materials are: 1) Google Alerts 2) Scoop.it 3) Alltop 4) Digg and 5) Delicious.
  •  Strategy = social media success. Research shows that organizations achieving the most success with social media are ones who select channels LAST. Instead, they formulate and follow a strategic plan, complete with objectives, target audiences, success metrics and more. Being everywhere is not the goal. Being effective at what you do is.
  • YouTube delivers more than entertainment. A well-executed YouTube strategy can actually drive business to your company and boost search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. As the world’s second largest search engine, YouTube is a smart option for extending your reach through a branded channel or sponsored advertisements (the ones that precede videos).
  • Email is the dominant digital communication channel of our day. According to ExactTarget’s 2012 Channel Preference Survey, email today is the channel they prefer for permission-based marketing messages. In fact, an overwhelming 77% of all consumers surveyed prefer to receive promotional messages from companies via email compared to 5% who prefer text messages and 4% who prefer Facebook. Today, if you want to drive retention and repeat usage, there isn’t a better way to do it than email.
  • Although affluent Americans are spending more time online and adopting mobile devices at an exponentially increasing rate, traditional media channels still have great reach among these estimated 59 million US adults with $100,000 in annual household income, according to an Ipsos MediaCT survey released in September 2012. And when it comes to ad receptiveness, the largest proportion of affluents surveyed said they were most receptive to ads on TV, followed by magazines and newspapers.
  • According to  eMarketer, tablet penetration will reach 29.1 percent of Internet users by the end of 2012. And according to another research study, tablets’ share of website traffic is on track to exceed the traffic of smartphones by early next year. Importantly for marketers, tablet consumers over-index among affluents: 60% of tablet users live in households with annual incomes of $75,000 or more.
  • The rise of mobile shopping has been a bit of a double-edged sword for some marketers, especially retailers. With shoppers able to comparison-shop on their smartphones while standing in the aisles, there’s been a troubling rise in “showrooming,” the consumer practice of checking out products in store, then buying the cheapest one online. The two biggest challenges brick-and-mortar retailers face are getting traffic and then converting the traffic into a sale. Customer loyalty programs and manufacturer supported/paid-for in-store merchandising are on the rise. Due to the competitive environment, retailers are likely to lean harder on manufacturers.
  • Baby Boomers make up approximately 40% of consumer demand and companies who see this audience as a big source of revenue are still relying on — and growing media budgets for — “old school” channels like newspapers, television and outdoor.  Online usage with the group is growing but “old” is still king.
  • Based on the results of Exhibit Surveys, Inc. Annual Trade Show Trends report,  81% of trade show attendees in 2011 had the power to make a purchasing decision or influence the purchasing decision and 35% of attendees reported that their intent to buy was more favorable after visiting an impactful company’s exhibit.  This means that for businesses that exhibit, the value of attending trade shows lies not only in meeting decision makers or influencers in the buying process but also in building brand loyalty and brand awareness.

As I said, it’s easy to delete a bunch of good information that comes your way because of time constraints, being short staffed or being overwhelmed with email after email.  But this is all good information that I received and looked over before I hit the delete key.  If you’ve read this far, you’ve made the same thoughtful decision as well.

Is the best-kept secret in marketing YOU?

In my day-to-day work, I speak and meet with a number of companies that are really good at what they do.  In fact, some are just outstanding at their specialty or niche. The problem is that too few people know about them. You practically need to trip over them to know that they exist.

Almost invariably, the VPs of Sales & Marketing for these companies voice their frustrations over the fact that while the company is good at doing what they do, they’ve not grown sales, nor increased their customer bases or product volumes, nor enhanced their brand visibility as their executive management team would have liked. In many ways, their companies end up becoming their respective industries’ dreaded “best kept secrets.” If this sounds painfully familiar, let me offer up a reason why this has happened and how to avoid this trap.

First, one needs to remember that there are two different sides to your business.  One is what I call “inside reality” and the other is “outside perception.” The “inside reality” are all the things your business does that makes it valuable to customers and gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It’s all your skills, people, expertise, service, commitment to excellence, passion, and the way you conduct your business.

I’m sure that if you asked your customers why they bought from you, they could tell you something quantifiable, specific, and instantly obvious. They might point to specific benefits for doing business with you and say,  “That’s why I do business with you, that’s why I refer my friends to come here, that’s why I’m a loyal customer, that’s why I don’t mind paying a bit more for your products, that’s why I keep coming back.”

The problem then isn’t your “inside reality” but the “outside perception,” which is how prospects PERCEIVE your company, if they perceive it at all. Very commonly, there’s a fundamental disconnect between your inside reality and outside perception.

See, regardless of how good you are, or how good your “inside reality” is, your prospect isn’t going to be able to figure it out based on marketing that doesn’t address their outside perception.  Take, for example, a bank that offers personal service.  Their inside reality is they greet every customer by name, open the doors as each customer enters and leaves, and offer individual financial advice based on the customers’ specific banking needs.  We’ll also assume their current customers are genuinely impressed.  But the outside perception of non-customer prospects is that all banks are pretty much the same and all talk about personal service while most don’t deliver on the promise – and it’s not really that important to them anyway.  Once a bank starts from that outside perception as the basis of their marketing, the solutions become entirely different.  And so do the results.  But the bank that continues to market based on such inside realities, especially in a non-creative or expected manner, will remain invisible to prospects because they’ve seen it all before.

You have to start by seeing your marketing through the eyes of a jaded, disinterested prospect who thinks they know all there is to know about you, or at least about the business you’re in.

So while “best kept secrets” might be seen as good for restaurants, traffic shortcuts and travel destinations, they’re NOT great for business.  Don’t get lost in the noise.  Whether it’s online, offline or thru social media channels, wave your ‘marketing arms’ and let people know you’re there.  Because being in business and not promoting your value as you should is like winking at a cute girl (or guy) in the dark. You may know what you’re doing but she or he sure doesn’t.

You’ve got 30 seconds to live.

Back in the early 1940s, Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company coined the phrase “USP – Unique Selling Proposition.”  The term referred to a having, finding or creating a distinctive point of view or reason to buy that is wholly different from the competitions’.

But as a catchphrase, USP is so 70-years-ago!

In the 80’s, marketing agencies, HR consultants and motivational speakers started using the term “elevator pitch,” which kinda says the same thing: What is so special about you (or your company, or your product) that you can express it in just 30 seconds on the ride up the elevator and expect the listener to get it?  We hear that term a lot in angel and investor meetings.

More recently, we find ourselves using the phrase “value proposition.”  And we’ve shorted the time to about 5 seconds, but we’ll settle for 30, just as long as it clearly tells the story.

Your value proposition is the answer to the question “what customer objective does my company help to achieve better than anyone or anything else?”

Whichever term you favor, USP, elevator pitch, or value proposition, without it, without a good one, you’re dead!  If you can’t very quickly describe what makes you, your product, your service or your company truly special in the eyes of the customer, don’t expect your customer to do it for you.  By default, they’ll just put you on the shelf called “commodity,” and there you’ll stay.

Every business, no matter what the business, starts out with the same baseline of customer fulfillment as its competition. If you have a fast food restaurant, for example, you might say your value proposition is fresh entrees at reasonable prices.  But then, doesn’t the competing restaurant down the road also say that?  So that alone doesn’t really make you special, does it?  Poof, you’re a commodity!  You’re just the same as everybody else.

On the other hand, your value proposition has to be one that is not merely unique but deserves an exclamation point in the eyes of your customer.  It has to create a real sense of Wow! or there really is no value, just proposition.  What can you say that captures the imagination and puts you in a class all your own? That’s at the very heart of making a sale or losing out on one.

I’ll be honest, defining your value proposition takes some real corporate soul-searching at the most fundamental level. It requires seeing yourself from your competitors’ customers’ point of view.  It may even require re-inventing your organization so that there’s an entirely new but better value proposition than the one you’re claiming now.

Commit to asking yourself, just as soon as you finish reading this post, “what’s our value proposition?”  Ask your associates and see if their answers agree with your own, and if they can articulate it in less than 90 seconds.  Aim for 30.  (For my company, we can do it in two seconds: “Agent of Change.”  We even own the registered trademark on it!)

Your value proposition is the very cornerstone of your business.  All sales and marketing must emanate from it.  The stronger your value proposition is…

…and the more clearly it expresses your unique ability to improve your customer’s lives…

…and the most concisely you can articulate it between elevator floors…

…the more confident you can be in betting on your company’s success!

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