Introduction
You’re now clear on the proposition itself, having based it on real insight along with the rationale to support the decisions made. Now you’ll flesh the proposition out and build a roadmap to implement and evolve it. Fully articulating and documenting the proposition blueprint is an important first step so you have a ‘single source’ of the truth you can refer to when making decisions in the future. Developing a roadmap for implementing it and showing how it can evolve into the future means that it doesn’t just end up as a PowerPoint in the marketing team SharePoint. In ‘proposition implementation’ you’ll work across the business to begin executing the promise.
Flesh out the proposition
The first step in proposition implementation is to ensure you have fully fleshed out the proposition. A full proposition house/hierarchy is a useful tool for several parts of the business. For Marketing it forms the starting ‘messaging house’. For Sales it provides prioritisation in the narrative you deliver buyers across the sales funnel. For Product and Service it provides strong steer on the pillars of the overall offer, allowing them to make decisions on touchpoint improvements and feature enhancements.
At this stage, if you didn’t do this fully in the design stage, it’s time to craft your value proposition statement; the highest level of narrative/messaging you’ll have. It’s a very concise and clear articulation of who you are for, what you do for them and the benefits they will accomplish, the ‘why’.
Next you need to build out the pillars of the proposition. You may have chosen your pillars in the design stage but now is time to add to them. These are the building blocks for your business going forward. What are the three to five things you are going to do or be known for to deliver the overarching proposition value statement? How will you articulate them so they can be both used for campaigns and helpfully direct activity in the business?
Finally, adding evidence and reasons to believe to the proposition hierarchy so we build internal confidence and provide sales and marketing proof points for messaging.
Develop the go to market roadmap
This is now where you’re ready to build out the go to market plan and the proposition roadmap. The former is where you evaluate how you will develop and launch the customer facing side of the proposition, delivering sales and marketing collateral to customers and cementing the new proposition in their minds.
Along with the launch activity, it’s likely your chosen proposition will require improvements to be made in the business in order to truly live up to it. This is usually the case unless you’ve chosen a very safe, deliverable proposition that’s unlikely to shift the dial with customers. Assuming that’s not the case, a key step is identifying areas to improve, in line with the core pillars identified above, so you can truly deliver the proposition well for customers.
We’ll tend to identify key activities that enhance the proposition and help the team deliver it well over the short, medium and long term. This is where, again, we’re linking back in with the business or business unit strategy.
It is vitally important that this is built with the team and leadership together. Without leadership buy-in it’s likely to remain just words on a page. Bringing key stakeholders into a working session to further develop a strawman ‘plan’ you’ve developed beforehand is usually the best way to do it. This means you’re not starting from scratch in the room and gives team members the forum to challenge, add and remove activities.
The key here is to focus on the areas and activities that will have the biggest impact. This is all within the strategic and operational constraints you/the team/business has. What can you, your team and your stakeholders do to better deliver the proposition and the key proposition pillars that sit within it?
Don’t be tempted to see it as an opportunity to cram everything into the backlog. This is an opportunity to use your proposition and pillars to say no to things. There is always, as you well know, an endless list of things you can do to improve your business, this is an opportunity to prioritise what you want to be good at and to be known for. Use your proposition to guide that. Be mindful that ‘fixing the basics’ (the excuse people use for not tackling the harder things that you’ll become known for) will never end.
Obviously, if there are fundamental gaps or weaknesses compared to your desired proposition, you should look to improve them but don’t just focus on the weaknesses. Often improving your strengths further is how you really cement your business in the mind of your customers and build a ‘moat’ around what you do. Seek to make your strengths so unassailable that the competition can’t keep up.
Building the plan
No need for an overly complex Gantt chart at this stage. Breaking activities into ‘areas’ such as marketing, sales, product or team and into stages such as short (<6mth), mid (6-18mth) and long (>18mth) term buckets will provide enough detail.
Developing the blueprint.
You have your proposition and a plan to develop it, now you’ll document it in a way that can be communicated and implemented across the organisation. This might require a few rounds of iteration potentially dipping back into activities in the design stage.
It’s that single source of truth. An internal document to explain exactly what the proposition is, how it was developed, and why it’s the right proposition for your business.
It articulates:
- The core insight – the evidence that led to the chosen proposition from the 3C’s insight base you have built
- The Proposition – a clear, succinct articulation of the lead message and proposition components/pillars. These are the promises and focus areas you are committing to deliver in a way that’s better, different or distinctive to the competition.
- Reasons to believe – real capabilities and initiatives that support the proposition pillars. These are usually the tangible things that customers see, feel and engage with.
- Roadmap – visually outlining the GTM & roadmap you’ve built over the last few steps
Sharing the proposition.
Now that the proposition has been developed, the wider business needs to be taken through it. This provides clarity for everyone involved on how the organisation will present itself going forward. While you make have involved many in the organisation during the development of the proposition, there are more stakeholders who will need to be made aware of it, the messaging and how they can apply it.
“It’s important to identify ways in which feedback from these actions and engagements can be used to further sharpen and improve your proposition.
Continued iteration
It’s not one-and-done.
Your proposition isn’t a one-and-done exercise. You can’t set it and review in 3 years. Evolving your proposition should be an iterative process and just as you will have done with this process, it’s vital to put insight (especially from the customer) at the front and centre of this iteration. As you start to execute the proposition through the things you do, the marketing collateral you deliver and the sales conversations the business has, it’s important to identify ways in which feedback from these actions and engagements can be used to further sharpen and improve your proposition. This can be through short spot surveys, follow questions to customers after a sale is made (or not) or simply getting your team members on the front line to share what they’ve found resonates and importantly, what doesn’t land as well after any customer interactions they have.
Call for consistency
Although your proposition will evolve, it is also important to stress the need for consistency and patience. Time will be required for it to bed in. Internally, people need to familiarise themselves with what it is and how it impacts what they do and say. Externally, it’s going to take time to gain traction unless you have the luxury of bottomless pockets to shout about it through your marketing execution.
It can be easy to make kneejerk reactions based on one or two negative comments (mainly from people who are used to talking the old way) and make a significant pivot based on opinion. We’ve all been there. However, if you put trust in this process and the insight you gathered, you can help the business understand why the proposition decided on is the right one to stick with and build on.
Conclusion
Now you’ve seen how proposition implementation can be achieved to ensure you have aligned your teams and can begin making decisions based on it.
With a well-designed proposition, based on real insight, launched effectively and used as a tool for improving your business you’ll be standing out from your competition in no time.
