If you went to a grocery store and saw these two signs above a basket of apples, which would entice you more to buy?
1. Satisfy your hunger with a delicious snack that will keep you healthy.
2. Our well-known snack comes in 7,500 delicious flavors and has fiber and vitamin C for nutrition.
Did you say the first? Hopefully, you found that statement more appealing. It focuses on the customer by explaining what you’ll get from the snack if you buy it. The second statement is centered around the product. It shares compelling facts about the apple, but it doesn’t motivate you to understand the benefits of eating it.
This apple example demonstrates how to communicate a product that compels someone to want to buy it. Every company should talk about their product with the customer benefit in mind - whether you’re a complex B2B training company or a B2C study app.
A value proposition is one sentence that explains how people benefit from using your service.
At its core, highlighting the customer benefits of a product or service starts with defining the value proposition as part of your education marketing strategy. A value proposition is one sentence that explains how people benefit from using your service. It is focused on the advantages to the customer, not the features of your service or history of your company.
How to create a value proposition for your training company
The most important (and hardest) step in the process of creating a value proposition is to think beyond the details ingrained in your head about your training company’s approach, expertise, and how you work with your clients. Instead, put yourself in your customer’s shoes at the moment they realize they need training and are searching for a provider. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help get into your customer’s mindset:
What does your customer need? Why are they in the market for hiring a training company?
What problem are you solving for your customers?
How do you make your customer’s lives better?
How are you different from your competitors?
Get your team involved by asking these questions to your staff who interact with clients. Also, don’t guess about what your customers are thinking - get out and ask them these questions too.
Listen with an open mind to people’s responses and take notes. See if you notice any similarities or trends in the answers. Remove comments that are highly focused on the features of your service. Then condense the most common themes into a one-sentence value proposition.
Why do you need a value proposition?
Your value proposition should inform all communications across marketing and sales. It will unite the way your company talks about the service you provide and will ultimately attract qualified leads who relate to your value proposition.
When B2B buyers look for a provider, they spend most of their time researching independently online. Only 17% of their time is spent meeting with a potential supplier. So you can’t rely on your sales team to explain how your company will benefit prospects in a conversation. Instead, you need to bring those points to the forefront in places where potential customers are searching on their own, primarily your website.
The headline on the homepage of your website is where you need to highlight your value proposition and convince the potential buyer to keep exploring. As they continue their research, your value proposition should be prevalent. It needs to be on your “about us” page, your social media profiles, your directory listings on other websites, and in all sales collateral.
If a prospect doesn’t find your website compelling at first glance, they will look elsewhere, and you’ll lose a potential sale.
Examples of value propositions for training companies
Now let’s see what this looks like in real life. Here are the headlines on the homepages of some of the top leadership training companies of 2021 according to Training Industry:
Grow your people. Transform your learning culture with microlearning.
People development that impacts beyond work.
By your side. Start building better leaders.
Use our innovation to realize your vision. Drive your workforce and business forward.
Beyond knowledge. A worldwide leader in training and development.
Culture, strategy & change delivered through training. Learning experiences that engage individuals, teams, & the workforce.
Digital learning solutions designed for skills acquisition.
Professional training from the best in the business.
Our experiential learning practice has the power to transform organizations by liberating the humanity inside.
Serving you since 1987. [Company] is the world’s premier provider of Motivational Intelligence training and development.
Reading through those headlines, which resonate with you the most? Which interests you enough to want to learn more? Which would drive you to exit out of the webpage immediately?
The headlines listed at the top are the most customer-focused (and hopefully the most appealing to you). They identified a value proposition and translated it into a compelling headline. As you move down the list, the headlines become more focused on the company.
Potential customers visit your website before they reach out to talk to your sales team. Therefore you need to capture their attention while they are researching on their own. Don’t risk missing out on a sale because someone clicks away from your website after reading an unappealing headline. Explain how your training will benefit their employees and draw them in. Continue to communicate your value proposition through your website and online presence. Lead with how you’ll help them, and you’ll get more clients!
