- When the website isn't quite converting,
when no one's clicking on your ads,
when the landing page just isn't getting the emails,
when the cold emails aren't getting any responses,
I don't look at any of those specific things.
I don't look at whether the website is pretty.
It doesn't matter.
I don't look at whether the ad is too small,
too short or too long,
I don't look at that.
I don't look at whether the cold email
has the meme that makes you laugh or not.
None of those things matter,
what matters is this one thing,
what matters the most is your value proposition.
Your value proposition
is at the heart of all your go-to-market activities.
If you nail your value proposition,
everything else starts to work.
If you ignore it, skip over it, don't get it right,
don't craft it in the right way,
you can run all those go-to-market activities,
but none of them will actually succeed
and you won't know why.
So in this episode,
I'm gonna walk you through a crash course
on actually how to craft
your value proposition, stress test it,
and make sure you don't make the biggest mistakes.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody,
welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK.
And on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
If you are new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode like this two to three times a week
to help you grow your SaaS businesses faster.
So be sure to hit the subscribe button
and that bell icon,
that way you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode
with the TK energy.
If you're already part of my SaaS
go-to-market coaching program,
if you're part of this community, welcome back.
It's so awesome to see you over here.
When ToutApp first started, this was my last SaaS business,
we positioned ourselves as an email tool for business users,
for power business users.
Needless to say that didn't work.
The moment we recrafted our value proposition
to be about salespeople,
to help them actually send emails
around email productivity for salespeople
and to close more deals,
everything started to change.
And the minute we actually put attention
on our value proposition,
our website, our ads, our cold emails, our cold calls,
everything shifted along with that value proposition
and we started to grow faster.
That is the power of a value proposition.
Now here's the problem.
Everyone thinks they know what a value proposition is,
everyone thinks they have one,
people graze over it
and they go onto all the other go-to-market activities.
And then when they don't work,
they're like, "I don't know what's wrong."
So in this video, I'm gonna give you a crash course
on how to craft your value proposition
and avoid the biggest mistakes
'cause that's what I focus on
every single time I'm diagnosing a SaaS business.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm
and let's go into principle number one.
So principle number one,
is you gotta think about the thing about the thing.
Let me explain.
Whenever I'm talking to a founder
and I've made the same mistake, I'm like,
"All right, what do you guys do
that's so different in the market?"
And almost immediately
they start devolving into a feature discussion.
Like, "Well, TK, you know we have this export feature
where it integrates with this platform
and it syncs it automatically
and because of that."
And I'm like already lost
and I already know why customers are getting confused.
What you have to do.
is before you start getting
into all the nitty-gritty features,
which are important to differentiate in the market,
when you're crafting your value proposition,
you have to take a step back
and think about the thing about the thing.
This is your thing, that's the software.
And your users say,
I use the thing, the software, so that I can blank.
Blank being the key result that they really care about,
and they probably get paid for,
it's part of their compensation plan.
If you're gonna craft a really effective value proposition,
you need to forget the features for a second,
you need to forget the nitty-gritties for a second,
you need to forget about you for a second,
and think about your ideal customer,
and think about what is the core result
that they're really getting
when they're using your software.
By the time they're done with their software
and then going home, what have they accomplished?
What have they achieved
that aligns with their compensation plan?
That alone, if you can start to hone in on that,
a lot of other pieces around your value proposition
is gonna start to become a lot more apparent.
As an extension of principle number one,
I always get founders to think about,
well, what is your one sentence value proposition?
So here's a template I like to use
and I've used different versions of it.
I work at blank,
that's the company name.
We build software,
we all build software to help blank,
that's your ICP, blank, which is the result using blank,
which is your differentiation.
So as an example, right?
Let me give you an example 'cause I know there's a lot
and you can rewind this video
if you wanna watch this part again.
Here's an example for ToutApp.
I work at ToutApp,
we build software to help salespeople
generate more pipeline using email automation.
So this value proposition would have worked fine
10, 11 years ago when we first came out
because it was very clear.
The name of the company was there,
we help salespeople to generate pipeline.
All of that is still true today.
Except back then, email automation was a very special,
it was very different.
Marketers had it
but salespeople didn't have it.
So as soon as we sent email automation
everyone got super excited.
Fast forward today,
there's multiple companies in the space,
there's a new sales engagement product
being born every single week,
everyone's starting one, I don't know why.
And so just saying,
hey, we're sales engagement or we do email automation
is not enough of a differentiator.
So you can start to see what the key blanks are, right?
So if you can answer this
and fit it into an actual index card,
then you're starting to get into a real value proposition.
The name of the company, that's easy,
your ICP, that should be easy.
What does the core result that you get?
What do they get paid for
that you actually help enable?
Using your differentiator,
what is the big thing that's different
about your software versus everyone else?
This simple sentence, this simple sentence
can actually help you craft
a very straightforward value proposition.
In fact, if you can fit it into an index card,
you're gonna be better off
because it forces you to be succinct, right?
So that's principle number one,
get your head out of the software
and the features and all those things,
start thinking about the result and the differentiator.
Those are the two big levers that you have,
along with your company name and your ICP.
Once you have that, then you need to start
to stress test this.
I see a lot of founders that have developed their value prop
and they're like, "Yep, here's my sentence, I got it."
And I was talking to a founder in fact today,
and they create software for a very specific niche industry.
And their value prop was like,
"We are a software, this is our name.
We create software to help you generate more revenues."
And I'm like, "That's great,
like you could be a marketing agency,
you could be a PR firm."
All of them can claim that value prop
that's not specific enough,
you have to get a lot more specific.
You'll notice over here
where we got pretty specific on saying
generate more pipeline.
In the early mid days of ToutApp,
you would just say close more deals,
which was pretty good,
but it wasn't specific enough.
Later on as the space evolved, it became very clear
that was much more about pipeline.
So principle number two
as you're filling out that sentence,
as you're crafting your value proposition,
you should avoid being vague.
You should avoid being high level.
You should think about what is the specific result
that software is really driving for your ICP.
Growth is a great thing, it's a permanent pain,
it's a good thing to have and align to,
but it's not enough.
If you double click on growth,
what is this specific thing
they're looking to get to,
the specific result that's gonna enable growth
if it can do that?
For us, it was pipeline,
pipeline enables growth and enables you to make more money.
So it's communicated,
but we get specific.
So you can start to think about like,
"Well, what are we doing around pipeline?
And are we using email automation?"
And it gets you to think about,
well, is there something different over here?
So being a very specific
in this last line over here, around email automation
and your core result here,
is super, super important.
Now let me pause here for a second.
I have one more principle
and I have a couple of other things
that you can tack on to this.
Let me just pause here for a second.
Think about this sentence.
If you have clarity
into the result that you're delivering
and the differentiation that you have
and you can fit it into the sentence,
can you start to see,
if you get clarity on this
and you really do the research around
what these words should be in those blanks,
can you start to see how you would craft things differently
in your current homepage?
Can you start to see how your cold email
might look very different?
The subject line of it or the value prop inside of it?
Can you start to see how your ads might completely change?
Can you start to see the power
of how this simple sentence,
a simple thing called the value proposition,
feeds into all these other really hard things
that you're doing.
And you can you start to see,
how if you nail the value proposition,
it rises all tides
and it actually helps you accelerate
everything else that you're doing.
And can you start to see how, if you don't get this right,
if you start to get obsessed around the features,
if you are actually being vague,
then your homepage, your landing page,
your emails, your ads, none of those are gonna work.
If you can start to see the power of that,
can I just get a yes in the comments below.
Also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm,
it really likes it when you do that.
Now, if you're figuring this stuff out,
I have one more principle for you.
But before I do, I also wanna tell you
I have my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
The big thing we do inside of this coaching program,
is develop the strategy around your go-to-market,
your positioning, your messaging,
your value proposition, your strategic narrative.
This is all stuff that gets grazed over.
I'll tell you more about it at the end this video,
I have one more principle for you,
but if you are navigating this path right now,
you should check out the program
because it's the cheat codes
to actually develop your overall go-to-market strategy.
So principle number three is,
is it or are you differentiated?
This is super important.
It goes back to a point I made earlier on
when I was starting.
10 years ago, this was pretty differentiated.
Most sales teams weren't using email automation,
they still had a pipeline problem
and salespeople really needed to generate pipeline.
It would have been differentiated.
Fast forward today,
there's so many email automation tools,
every sales team uses it,
it's baked into HubSpot, there's SalesLoft,
there's Outreach and there's a new one
that's coming out every week.
So, it's not differentiated anymore.
And so you have to ask yourself
in the value proposition that you're crafting,
compared to the competitors that are out there,
what is the differentiated piece around your software?
Because if you call up someone now
or you're running an ad right now,
people already know, they're gonna be like,
"Yeah, we already have a sales engagement tool,
we're good."
It's all of a sudden,
you have to think about new ways of differentiating.
So let's just say you start a new in sales engagement tool.
How could you differentiate?
Well, here's some ways that companies tend to differentiate
in the SaaS space.
Number one, you can say it's simpler.
You can say, look,
sales engagement has gotten way too complicated,
we're the simple one.
The simplest way when you get started,
you can run a campaign really quickly.
You could also say, we are enterprise grade,
meaning look there's the rest of them,
we're the only ones that are enterprise grade
and you could do all the things that are hard
that are associated with that.
You could also say we are the most secure.
You can say, you know what?
Those other guys are not secure,
maybe this is relevant for your space,
we're the most secure.
In fact, we do these five things
to actually secure ourselves even more.
And that could differentiate you.
You could also say we're premium,
we're the most expensive.
We're the most expensive
and there's a reason for it,
we're the most premium platform,
it comes with white glove service.
We actually crack your emails for you,
we do email audits.
You could do all kinds of things that
and say we're the most premium.
Are you guys starting to see this?
So it's not enough that you have the key result
that ties to the compensation plan.
It's not enough that you crafted
into a really nifty sentence,
you also need to make sure it's very specific
and it's differentiated.
When you start to put all these things together,
it's almost like a puzzle and it clicks,
that's when you have a really powerful value proposition.
When you have a really powerful value proposition,
you can then feed that into your landing page, your ads,
your cold emails, everything else you're doing
for your go-to-market strategy,
for you go-to-market machine,
and it will increase the conversion rates.
If you don't nail all these things,
then it will hurt the conversion rates.
And you might be looking at well, you know what?
I bet it's because the landing page is not pretty,
let's go a higher design.
It's not that any of those things,
it's probably your value proposition.
So that's what I had for you today,
those are my principles to recap.
Shift your mindset,
think about the thing about the thing,
craft your value proposition
into a template like this for starters,
you'll get 80% there.
Be very specific about the result
that you are delivering and how you're delivering it.
And also focus on differentiating
from the competition in the market
using very specific levers.
Those are the key things you can do,
to actually craft your value proposition.
When you do, you'll be able to accelerate your growth
and the effectiveness
of the rest of your go-to-market strategy.
Now, if you got value from this video,
please smash that like button for you to algorithm,
but I have something more important for you.
If you're getting tired of watching
more and more and more YouTube videos,
I know there's so many out there
on value proposition, on positioning,
on messaging and go-to-market strategy
on all of these things.
If you're getting a little bit tired
and you're in that phase where you're like
"I got to get my go-to-market market strategy working,
I got to get growth going,
I need to make sure my positioning is right,
I need to make sure I'm doing outbound, inbound,
all these pieces right."
And you want a framework to follow,
this is exactly why I created
my SaaS go-to-market coaching program.
Inside of my coaching program,
I help give you a framework
on exactly how to craft your go-to-market strategy,
I coach you through it,
I give you the metrics to measure,
I give you the templates,
so that you can effectively craft
and execute on a scalable go-to-market machine.
If you're interested in that,
I invite you to set up a call with me.
We can get on a one-on-one strategy call,
we can talk through where you are in your SaaS business,
where you're looking to get you
if my framework and my program can help.
And if it can, then I'll tell you all about it,
and I'll invite you to join.
To set up this call,
just go to tkkader.com/gtm
tkkader.com/gtm.
There's a page where I give you
all the details of my program,
and you fill out a few form fields
and you'll be able to book a call with me.
And on the call,
we can dig into where you are in the company,
what's holding you back,
and how to actually accelerate your growth.
Just go to tkkader.com/gtm.
So let's close out from here,
that's all I have for you today.
If you haven't smash that like button yet,
be sure to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm,
if you are new and you haven't subscribed yet,
I drop a video like this with actionable strategies
to grow your SaaS business two to three times a week.
So be sure that that subscribe button
and that bell icon, that way you'll get notified.
If you have a fellow founder,
if you're part of a Slack group or WhatsApp group,
if you have a team member
that could get value from my channel and this video,
please share it with them,
it'll mean the world to me and my team,
put a lot of love into these videos.
Lastly remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK,
and I'll see you in the next episode.
(upbeat music)