Value proposition: how to write one customers understand, and check it before you publish

Key Takeaways

• A value proposition is the concrete promise of what result a specific customer gets by choosing you instead of their alternative. If it doesn't name the customer, the result and the alternative, it's a slogan.
• Readers decide fast. Visitors often leave a page within 10 to 20 seconds and read, at most, 28% of its words (Nielsen Norman Group). The proposition has to land in that time.
• Promises without backing don't persuade. Most value propositions in business markets claim savings and benefits without proving them, and buyers dismiss them as marketing puffery (Anderson, Narus and van Rossum, Harvard Business Review, 2006).
• What persuades is found by testing. In an experiment with about 53,000 letters from a lender, showing one loan example instead of four moved demand as much as a 25% cut in the interest rate, and nobody had predicted it (Bertrand et al., Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2010).
• The most useful test is asking current customers how they would feel if you disappeared. Superhuman went from 22% to 58% of users "very disappointed" by adjusting its product and target customer around that question.

Almost every company has a sentence that says what it does. It's on the website, in the sales deck and on the LinkedIn profile, and it usually sounds like the competition's: "integrated quality solutions with the best service". The customer reads it, can't tell what changes for them if they choose you, and keeps looking.

The problem is rarely a lack of channels. According to DANE, Colombia's statistics office, 77.3% of the manufacturing firms and 65.8% of the retail and wholesale firms it surveys already had a website in 2024. The useful question is what that website says and whether customers understand it.

This guide explains what a value proposition is, how it differs from a slogan or a business model, and how to write one step by step. It focuses on the part most guides skip, which is checking with real customers that the proposition is true and understood. It is part of our guide to business growth.

What is a value proposition?

A value proposition is the promise of what concrete result a type of customer gets by choosing your product or service, and why that result beats the alternative they would use if they didn't choose you. The term was popularized by a 1988 McKinsey staff paper by Michael Lanning and Edward Michaels, which described the company as a value delivery system and called for a clear proposition for each customer segment.

A useful value proposition answers three questions: who it is for, what result they get, and which alternative it beats. The alternative can be a direct competitor, a spreadsheet, the nephew who "knows computers", or doing nothing.

Those questions come from Jobs to Be Done, Clayton Christensen's framework holding that customers "hire" a product to make a specific kind of progress, which he calls a job. Jobs to Be Done helps you discover that job and the alternatives you compete with. The value proposition is the sentence that tells the customer you understood their job and solve it better than those alternatives.

It is often confused with other pieces that also appear on the website.

The value proposition is one piece of the business model. The model explains how the company makes money delivering that promise; the proposition explains why the customer wants it.

Why do most value propositions fail?

Because they talk about the company instead of the customer's result, and because they promise without proof. James Anderson, James Narus and Wouter van Rossum reviewed how companies formulate their propositions in business markets and published the results in Customer Value Propositions in Business Markets (Harvard Business Review, 2006). They found no agreement on what a value proposition is, and that most claim savings and benefits without backing them up, so buyers dismiss them as "marketing puffery".

The second problem is time. Nielsen Norman Group analyzed Microsoft Research data on more than 205,000 pages and concluded that users often leave a web page within 10 to 20 seconds unless something holds them. Its recommendation is literal: communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds. In another study, the same firm calculated that on an average visit users have time to read at most 28% of the words on a page, and that about 20% is more likely.

The third problem is promising a single generic thing. Bain & Company surveyed more than 10,000 US consumers about more than 50 companies and identified 30 elements of value, from saving time and reducing effort to providing peace of mind or a sense of belonging. Companies that scored high on four or more elements had three times the customer advocacy of those that stood out on only one, and recent revenue growth four times greater. This is a correlation and doesn't prove that adding elements causes growth, but it suggests strong propositions solve several things the customer values at once.

How to build a value proposition step by step

This process works for product or service companies, B2B or B2C. The first four steps build the proposition and the last three test it.

1. Pick one type of customer and the job they hire you for

A value proposition for "all small businesses" speaks to none of them. Pick the type of customer that buys from you most or leaves you the best margin, and describe the progress they want when they hire you, in their words. That progress is what the Jobs to Be Done framework calls the customer's "job". If you have two types of customer with different jobs, you need two propositions.

2. Name the real alternative you compete with

Ask recent customers what they did before buying from you and what other options they considered. The answer is almost never the competitor list in your deck. For an accounting software company, the most common alternative may be the accountant's spreadsheet; for a consultancy, the manager continuing to postpone the decision. Your proposition will be judged against that alternative, so you need to know it.

3. Write results, not features

Make two columns. In the first, what your product has or does. In the second, what changes for the customer because of it: hours recovered, errors avoided, money no longer lost, risk removed. Strategyzer's value proposition canvas organizes this exercise into customer jobs, the pains they suffer and the gains they seek. Use it as a checklist, because filling it in proves nothing; Strategyzer itself warns that fit between product and customer is a claim until customers confirm it.

4. Choose the difference that matters most to that customer

From the results in the second column, keep the one that meets two conditions: the customer cares a lot about it and your alternative handles it worse. Anderson, Narus and van Rossum call this approach "resonating focus": a few differences, the ones that weigh most in the decision, instead of a list of every benefit. If you're torn between two, step 7 will tell you which works.

5. Write it in one sentence and give it the 10-second test

A structure that works is: "For [type of customer] who [situation or job], [your product] [concrete result], unlike [alternative]". Then strip out everything that sounds like a brochure. Show it to five people who resemble your customer for 10 seconds and ask them to tell you, in their words, what you do and for whom. If they can't repeat it, the sentence isn't ready yet, however right it seems to you.

6. Back every promise with proof

Every claim in the proposition needs something to support it: a figure from a customer with their permission, a documented case, a demo, a guarantee or a trial period. "Saves time" persuades nobody; "month-end close went from 15 to 5 days for the retailers we serve" does, as long as it's true and you can show it. If a promise has no proof, tone it down or remove it.

7. Test it with real customers before you publish it

There are three ways to do it, from least to most effort. The first is Sean Ellis's question to current customers: "How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?" According to Rahul Vohra, founder of Superhuman, Ellis found that companies with fewer than 40% of users answering "very disappointed" tended to struggle to grow. The second is comparing two versions of the proposition in the same channel, for example two email subject lines or two website headlines, with the same type of customer over the same period. The third is the simplest and the most often forgotten: listen to the exact words your best customers use when they recommend you, and copy them.

Real case: a letter with fewer options moved demand like a 25% price cut

In South Africa, a consumer lender mailed letters to about 53,000 former clients offering them a new loan. A group of economists (Marianne Bertrand, Dean Karlan, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir and Jonathan Zinman) used the mailing for an experiment, randomly assigning the interest rate each client received and several elements of the letter's content: how many loan examples it showed, whether it suggested a use for the money, whether it included a photo, whether it compared the rate with competitors'. They published the results in What's Advertising Content Worth? (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2010).

Small changes in presentation moved demand as much as price did. According to the research brief from Innovations for Poverty Action, showing a single loan example in the letter, instead of a table with four options, increased loan take-up as much as a 25% reduction in the interest rate. Not suggesting a specific use for the money and a photo of a woman had effects of similar size. Mentioning staff who spoke the local language or comparing the rate with competitors' had no significant effect.

The conclusion most useful to a business is the authors' own: predicting which content would move demand turned out to be harder than they expected. If behavioral economists found it hard to anticipate, a company's team will too, and that is what step 7 is for. The way you present your proposition can be worth as much as a discount, and the only reliable way to know which presentation works is to test it with your customers.

This case comes from consumer credit, not from a B2B small business, and the photo is an effect not worth imitating without thought. What does carry over is the finding about simplicity: an offer with one clear example asks less effort of the reader than one with four alternatives to compare.

The other example: how Superhuman measured whether its proposition fit

Superhuman, an email app, used Sean Ellis's question as a thermometer. Rahul Vohra, its founder, described the process in First Round Review. In the summer of 2017, only 22% of its active users said they would be "very disappointed" if it no longer existed.

Instead of writing another sentence, the team looked at who the very disappointed users were and what they valued. Focusing on that segment raised the score to 33%. Then they adjusted the product based on what those users said kept them from loving it more, and within three quarters the score reached 58%. Superhuman changed its product and target customer as well as its message. That's why the case is less useful for copying wording and more useful for seeing how to measure whether a value proposition is true for a specific group of customers.

Common mistakes when writing a value proposition

On too many options, a nuance is in order. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper's famous jam study found that about 30% of those who tasted at a table with 6 flavors bought, against 3% at a table with 24 (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000). But a later meta-analysis of 50 experiments found that, on average, the effect of too many options is virtually zero, with wide variation between studies. Reducing options sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't, and the only way to know in your case is to test.

How does a value proposition change in B2B?

In B2B, one person rarely decides. Whoever uses the product wants it to make their work easier, whoever approves it wants to see the return, and whoever pays wants to control the risk. A B2B value proposition needs one main message and a different proof for each of those roles.

Emotions also matter in B2B. Bain extended its research to more than 2,000 business purchase decision makers and identified 40 B2B elements of value. Eric Almquist, one of its authors, stresses that there is a lot of emotion in B2B decision making, such as the peace of mind of not getting it wrong or the reputation of whoever recommended the supplier. A proposition that only talks about price and specifications leaves out part of what decides the purchase.

Frequently asked questions about value propositions

What's the difference between a value proposition and a slogan?

A slogan aims to be remembered; a value proposition aims to be chosen. A slogan can be ambiguous and emotional. A value proposition has to say who it's for, what result they get and why it beats the alternative. Many companies put a slogan where the value proposition should go on their website.

How long should a value proposition be?

The main sentence should be understood in 10 seconds, which usually means between 10 and 25 words. Below it can go a subheading that expands it and some concrete proof, and more detailed evidence can fill the rest of the page.

Can a company have several value propositions?

Yes, one for each type of customer with a different job. A food company may sell to supermarkets and to restaurants, and each buys for different reasons. What doesn't work is a single proposition trying to speak to all of them at once.

Is the value proposition canvas useful?

It helps you organize what you know about your customer and spot what you still need to find out, but filling it in proves nothing. Its value depends on what you fill it with: if the boxes come from interviews with real customers, the canvas leaves you with a proposition ready to test in step 7.

How often should you review your value proposition?

Whenever the customer, the alternative or your ability to keep the promise changes. In practice, review it at least once a year and whenever you notice new customers arriving for reasons other than what your website says, or your sales team explaining the company in a way that doesn't match what's written.

A value proposition is proven with customers

The best value proposition isn't the one written by the most creative team. It's the one your customers understand, repeat and can verify after buying. If your website says something your sales team doesn't repeat or your customers don't recognize, that's where the work starts.

At Suricata Labs we help companies that already sell define who their proposition is for, test it with their customers and connect it to the full customer journey, from the first search to the repeat purchase.

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Read also: What is Jobs to Be Done? The framework that explains why your customers really buy and Customer journey: how to map your customer's path