Investment pitches might promote the communication of a ‘secret sauce’, something unique that allows you to create disproportionate value as a business. That may be a useful definition for de-risking an investment, but it’s not helpful for marketing.
We prefer to focus on the ‘new thing’ you’ve created that a) solves the buyer’s problem and gets the job done they’re hiring you for, and b) is newsworthy.
We call it a ‘new thing’ because new news travels further. Your new thing will be creating new value in the market. It will be a new way to get customers from where they are to where they want to be. If we can create something novel we can get talked about. It has to be true, credible and valuable too.
How we discover your ‘new thing’
Our method is to find the novel in the intersection of four functions of your product:
- Technology: This is how you achieve the outcomes your customers hire you for. If you’re a service, this is the intellectual technology you deploy; your processes, frameworks, unique insight etc.
- Design: This is how you organise your technologies to deliver an outcome. For a laptop it’s the look and feel. For a service business, it’s the style, the tone and values you promote.
- User experience: This is the experience your customer enjoy. How you look after them, how they interact with your product or service, the UX and UI of tools etc
- Core insight: This is the thinking and observations that govern your product and approach. For Apple it’s that great products should be a combination of technology and design. For Facebook, their belief humanity is better off connected. For the BBC, that impartiality must underpin their public service credibility.
Each segment will react in their own way to your new thing. Ideally we find the segment who values your approach the most. They will see the value you create and we will be able to target these people as your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Central to this profile however will be the Job they’re hiring your product to get done. Your new thing must directly relate to that job.
For example, we have a client who is a financial data business. Their new thing allows investment managers to know, for the first time, the performance of private market companies they;ve invested in through Venture or Private Equity firms. The new thing is an approach to data accuracy that transforms investment in private markets.
By uncovering this approach and their use of data, we can promote the credibility in their data. Their new thing delivers the trust customers are seeking. We helped reframe it from an analytical method to a source of truth for buyers. The new thing defined their new position and functionality in the sales approach.
Learn more about how we discover where value lies in your product by watching Webinar 3: Value Propositions
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