In his book, Start with Why, Simon Sinek unpacks why some companies have wild success in the face of stiff competition. As a noted marketer, years ago he decided to decode why some companies have more success in a commoditized market. This led to the creation of the “golden circle” seen below.
What Simon found is that most companies are clear on what they deliver in the way of a product or service and how they go about doing that. But what he discovered is that it’s the most successful companies that are clear about why they are in business.
Why
Let’s look at the story behind Starbucks as an example. Howard Schultz, the CEO and founder of Starbucks, took a trip to Italy back in the 70’s. During that trip he experienced the amazing culture of the Italians, especially the prevalence of cafes wherever he traveled. What he learned is that the Italians have three places where they hang out: Home, work and the cafes. The cafes are a place where the community gathers throughout the course of the day to hang out with friends and family over coffee, snacks or later in the day, wine. The cafes are the third place where Italians spend time.
During his travels in Italy, Howard Schultz decided to create a third place to spend time in the United States: A place for people to hang out and socialize in much the same way that they do in the cafes in Italy. It’s interesting in Starbucks establishing their why, the focus was not on selling more coffee than any other coffee shop in the US. Everybody within Starbucks from the CEO on down is very clear about their why. It is to create an environment for people in the US to experience community in the form of a coffee shop. The coffee and other things that are sold are merely there to help create this environment.
So how does the why of a company impact the selling conversations that you have with your prospects and customers? Just like the why in your business is an indicator of success in the business world, there’s a corresponding word that is an indicator of success in the selling conversations that you have with your prospects and customers.
Meaning
The word is means or meaning. There’s a similar diagram you can use to ensure that you’re clear on what your product means for your prospect or customer. See the diagram below.
Instead of why, how and what, the conversation in the Golden Circle is Means, Does and Is. Just like being clear about your why is an indicator of success for your company’s product or service, being clear on what your product means to the prospect or customer will create success in the conversations that you’re having with your prospects and customers.
Meaning is derived or experienced by your prospects and customers when you communicate outcomes that will make a difference in their work and lives. Outcomes have meaning and meaning has corresponding emotions associated with them.
Value Position Statements
In order to communicate this meaning, you need to create a Value position statement(VPS). The basic elements that go into creating a value position are: Specific challenges that your prospect or customer may face, your unique ability to solve those challenges and the ability to demonstrate or prove that you can solve the challenges.
The first step is being very clear about your ideal customer persona (ICP). Then once you’ve identified common challenges that your ICP faces, now is the time to identify your unique ability to address these challenges. If you’re like a high number of sales professionals, you may be struggling with identifying something that’s unique to your product or service. It’s understandable, given we live in a commoditized world. However, if you look deep enough, you can typically find an element to your product or service that really is unique.
If you are unable to identify something that is truly unique, then work with something that represents a strength. Specifically, identify the reason that you win more deals than not. That reason can be used in place of something that is truly unique. Obviously you want to focus the conversation on a strength that has created success for you in the past.
Once you have created your VPS, it’s important to follow a framework, or playbook, during sales conversations so that you can successfully communicate your meaning and the value you provide in every conversation you’re having with prospects. We’ve created a checklist you can reference HERE.
If you’d like some help in increasing your revenue by closing more deals, reach out and let’s find a few minutes to chat on the phone. You can reach me at dkurkjian@mastermessaging.com or 678-561-6260.
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We understand it can be difficult to know where to start when developing a first conversation script. That’s why we’ve created a Sales Conversation Roadmap “Cheat Sheet” that you can download here.