The Secret to Startup Growth: A Customer-Centric Value Proposition

Growth expert Steve Patti joined us for a Clarity Live webinar last week to share some of his key lessons for growth. We’re sharing his top tips to keep you on the right track for startup success.

Steve’s three steps for startup growth are outlined below.

Step One: Understand the Approach for Becoming Customer-Centric

Get the Story Right: Be clear about why buyers should care about what you have to sell. Nail your positioning statement and then quantify it in terms of business outcomes that matter to customers.

Apply It: Once the brand positioning is defined and quantified, apply it to your messaging strategy, content production, lead generation tactics, and in your sales process so that you become your positioning.

Keep It Relevant: Audit your messaging and content for consistency and on-brand accuracy. Becoming customer-centric in your positioning approach begins with shifting from what you think is important – to what your buyer thinks is important.

Step Two: Ask Your Customers How Your Company Delivers Value from Their Perspective

Increase Customer Revenue: The first area to evaluate where you can add value for your customers is your ability to help them make money. This includes customer acquisition (new customers), increasing revenue per existing customer (LTV) and helping your customers improve their competitive advantage.

Reduce Costs: Ask your best customers if/how your product or service helps reduce their costs, and in turn, increases their profitability.

Reduce Risk:  Ask your best customers if/how your product or service helps them reduce risk such as human error, compliance risk, data loss risk, order/shipping accuracy, etc. Aiding in reducing risk is especially attractive to customers in highly regulated industries such as government, banking, and healthcare.

Improve the Customer Experience: Ask your best customers if/how your product or service delivery improves their ability to deliver customer experience excellence in areas such as customer support, new customer onboarding, and product/service usage.  When your customers improve their customer experience, they make more money.

Step 3: Transform Your Company to a Customer-Centric Market Approach

Define Value: Create a customer-centric value proposition based on input from your best customers, determine your financial proof points, and make sure that everything is measurable.

Deliver Value: Follow through, and make sure that customer-centric value is visible throughout the customer experience and internal culture.

Communicate Value: Be consistent in messaging through PR, social media, and content to communicate customer-centric value.  Adjust/adapt the messaging over time as customer input reveals new areas of value that your company is delivering and its financial impact to their business.

Sell Value: Make it easier to sell your products or services by adapting your sales and account strategy to focus on customer-centric value in your sales narratives and enablement materials. This will lead to shorter sales cycles, improve ROI, and can result in greater customer loyalty.

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We hope these tips help you focus your value proposition around your customer and increase growth! Let us know what you think @startupsco.