Choose an audience through a specific situation
A useful business audience shares needs that allow you to design a coherent response. Profession, sector and company size may help identify it, but they need a connection to the situation that prompts someone to seek a solution. That connection informs your message, the scope of your offer and the channels through which people find you.
“Small businesses” covers very different realities. A service team losing information between sales and delivery may have a more clearly defined need than a category based only on employee numbers. This is an illustrative example: the appropriate focus depends on the problems you understand and the capacity you have to address them.
Choosing an audience also means recognising requests that do not fit. Record the conditions your work needs to be useful, such as access to information, an available decision owner or a basic existing process. This definition helps qualify opportunities and explain who the offer serves, without suggesting it is suitable for every possible situation or stage of business.
Describe the problem in recognisable language
A proposition becomes clearer when it describes situations customers recognise from their daily work. Collect the words people use to explain difficulties, consequences and previous attempts, keeping each conversation in context. The purpose is to understand the buying decision, including what people fear, what they compare and what they need clarified before they can move forward.
Asking “what outcome are you looking for?” can open the conversation, but usually needs further questions. What happened recently, who was affected and how was it resolved? Concrete examples distinguish a general preference from a difficulty already consuming attention and resources. They also reveal when different people use the same word for different problems.
Organise observations by situation, consequence and current solution. Preserve meaningful differences instead of reducing them to an average phrase nobody would use. If information is limited, treat the wording as a hypothesis and test it again in real conversations. An elegant message can still miss the reason someone is looking for help in the first place.
Connect the outcome to what you deliver
The value proposition needs to show how the delivery contributes to the desired change. Explain the work included, the customer's expected involvement and the boundaries that affect the outcome. This connection makes comparison with real alternatives possible and reduces the distance between what the communication suggests and what the team will actually do during the engagement.
In a hypothetical example, “we organise the journey of sales enquiries” could include diagnosis, defined stages and preparation of a shared record. Each component addresses a difficulty: knowing where enquiries stand, deciding the next step and avoiding lost context. The description becomes stronger when it explains that relationship instead of accumulating disconnected features.
Distinguish outcomes you control from effects that depend on other conditions. Delivering a documented process differs from guaranteeing a particular sales volume. Clarity supports the customer's decision and gives the team observable working criteria. Developing a B2B sales process starts by making these decisions explicit enough for the people involved to understand and apply them consistently.
Find a difference that matters to the customer
A useful difference meaningfully changes the customer's choice or experience. It may involve specialisation, the method of delivery, the level of support or clarity of scope. The difference needs to be demonstrable and connected to a specific need, so the proposition explains its value without relying only on adjectives or vague comparisons with unspecified alternatives.
“Quality”, “innovation” and “personal attention” are words many businesses can use. Ask what behaviour would make each visible in practice. Personal attention might mean a named responsible person and a defined review process; specialisation might show in the questions asked and the problems the offer already anticipates before work begins.
You do not need to claim universal superiority. Explain the circumstances in which your approach makes sense and the choices that make it suitable. A focused offer may suit someone seeking a quick implementation, but be less appropriate for someone needing extensive organisational change. These conditions make the difference easier to understand and verify when the customer evaluates possible providers.
Match the evidence to the claim
Evidence should support exactly what you are claiming, with enough context for proper interpretation. Experience, work examples, demonstrations and testimonials serve different purposes and cannot simply replace one another. Select material that helps assess your ability to deliver that particular offer, preserving dates, conditions and distinctions between your own results and those achieved by other people.
In my case, €6 million in revenue from my own businesses and more than 30,000 customers describe my entrepreneurial experience. Those figures do not represent revenue generated for clients or results exclusively attributable to AI. The page about my businesses and decisions provides that context and connects it to the work I offer.
For a new business, evidence may begin with a process demonstration and a well documented limited experiment. Explain what was observed and what remains unclear. Do not turn an intention, an internal exercise or an isolated result into a general promise. Consistency between claim and evidence is more useful than a collection of numbers with no explanation of what they represent.
Complete the entire value proposition
A positioning exercise should bring audience, situation, outcome, delivery, difference and evidence together in one view. Fill each field with concrete information and mark hypotheses still requiring validation. Then check how the parts relate: the difference should help that audience, and the evidence should support the capability needed to fulfil the delivery you are actually presenting.
| Field | Working question |
|---|---|
| Audience | Who experiences the situation and participates in buying? |
| Situation | What happens and why does it matter now? |
| Outcome | What change does the customer seek? |
| Delivery | What work or resource do they actually receive? |
| Difference | Which choice makes the offer more suitable? |
| Evidence | What supports the claim being made? |
| Conditions | What needs to exist for delivery to work? |
Read the whole statement as a prospective customer would. Can you understand who it is for, what you receive and what you need to do? If the answer requires further explanation, first revisit the missing fields. Only then work on a shorter version for a page title or the opening of a sales presentation.
Test understanding and revise using evidence
Testing the proposition begins with understanding what people took from it and how they connect the offer to their situation. Observe questions, objections, unsuitable enquiries and reasons for proceeding or declining. These signals support specific changes when considered alongside where contacts came from and the sales process used to develop the conversation with each potential customer.
Ask someone from your intended audience to explain in their own words what they expect to receive. If they describe a different service, identify the expression that created that expectation. If they understand the offer but see little relevance, reconsider the chosen problem, its urgency or available alternatives. These are different difficulties requiring different changes.
To work on your business positioning, share the context through the individual mentoring form. Include the current offer, intended audience and examples of questions that arise in sales conversations. We can use that material to organise the proposition and identify the next validation required, keeping the writing connected to what you actually know about your customers.