Successful market segmentation comes with an added responsibility. Each time someone buys your product or service, he/she is choosing you over your competitors because that person found your offerings more valuable. In today’s competitive world, where multiple companies are offering similar products with similar features, it becomes incredibly difficult for startups to stand apart from the competition and drive their audience’s choices.

In this second article of our series, ‘SPANDA Framework,’ we guide you through the right way to ‘Prepare’ for audience conversion, profitability, and overall business growth. 

How to Prepare For Growth?

To prepare yourself for growth, you need to first determine who will need your products, what problems your offerings will solve for them, and why they should choose you over your competitors. Because the answers to those questions will form the basis of a unique value proposition that resonates with your audience’s needs/desires/expectations and compels them to take action. 

In addition to that, you will further need skilled and responsible sales consulting in India. Based on a deeper understanding of your company and industry dynamics, we help you not only define your VP but also –

• define your short-term and long-term business/marketing goals
• define KRAs and incentives to get alignment
• detail the career roadmap along with IDP (Individual Development Plan)
• develop a coaching culture
• change/reinvent the business model and organization design to better reach and serve customers amidst increasing competition, evolving consumer behavior, and altering market demands, regulatory policy changes, etc.

Read ahead to discover how our proven framework helps you achieve all of these, stand out from your competition, and holistically grow your startup:

Define Your Value Proposition

A value proposition (VP) is a brief statement that highlights the product’s value and its unique features to explain to the customers what they will gain by buying your product or service and convince them the purchase. It is one of the most vital conversion factors and the first thing that visitors should see on your page. There are four prominent types of VPs:

• Price value: highlights the cost-efficiency of your offering
• Customer convenience: shows how it solves the customers’ pain points and makes their lives easier
• Unique product value: highlights the unique features of your product/service
• Customer results: shows how your brand offering gets customer results

Businesses often tend to confuse a VP with a mission statement, tagline, catchphrase, or incentive. But it consists of the following components:

1. Headline: a bold and clear statement about the product/service that chooses clarity over persuasiveness
2. Few sentences describing the product’s benefits
3. Positioning statements: few points on how and why you are different from other similar providers (to effectively communicate this, conducting a competitive analysis can be incredibly helpful) 
4. Visuals: A clear picture of your product (preferably in action) to show the audience how it fits.

While the process sounds simple, the challenge lies in making it distinct, concise, interesting, and user-centric. An effective VP that converts,-

• shows how you solve the audiences’ problems
• differentiates you from the competitors
• explains the expected customer results
• avoids meaningless sales jargon/buzzwords and hyperbolic claims
• communicates clearly and directly with the audience
• remains brief

Set Your Goals 

Goal-setting is essential for steering a growing startup in the right direction. It increases employee motivation, encourages teamwork, and helps link individual vision to that of the whole organization. But at the same time, it is one of the most critical business challenges. 

Setting highly ambitious goals can make you look like an unrealistic authoritarian. But if you set goals that are too small, your team will think that you lack vision.

An effective and time-tested approach to setting realistic, accurate, and attainable business goals is to make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely (having a defined time period to achieve the goals). You must set goals that are intentional, achievable, practical, and clearly defined.

You must see that your marketing goals align with your overall business goals. Revenue, sales, closing rates, conversions, SQLs, MQLs, traffic, etc., are some important marketing goals to be identified and specified. Make sure that your goals are not overly ambitious without having the right practices in place. 

You must check if your resources, time frame, and benchmarks are practical and if the right initiatives are being taken in the right direction. It is also helpful to distinguish between your short-term and long-term goals early on.

While your long-term business goals (customer service, satisfaction, profits, retention, growth, etc.) will resonate with your mission statement and reflect the reason why your company was founded, the short-term ones will act as actionable milestones in your journey.  

Define KRAs and Use Incentives

You have segmented and identified your target audience, written a unique value proposition to convince them the purchase, and set your long and short-term goals. But to achieve those goals and grow your business, your employees need to be aligned with the larger business expectations. 

They need to have proper KRAs (Key Result Areas) that document-

• • • • • • • • how their job roles align with their organization’s goals
              • what key results they are expected to achieve
              • definitive timeline to achieve the results
              • end goals.

              They must be relevant to their roles, clearly stated, fair, a little challenging, and practically attainable. This helps the employees take more ownership of their roles now that they know what success looks like for them. And it consequently leads to higher employee motivation, better productivity, improved performance, clearer communication, faster accountability, better results, and enhanced growth.

              Using incentives is another way to ensure employee alignment. If your employees’ tasks have a clear and positive impact on your organizational goals, rewarding them is a great way to make them feel valued and acknowledge their contribution to the overall success of the whole business.

Develop Employee Careers for Holistic Business Growth

You have segmented and identified your target audience, written a unique value proposition to convince them the purchase, and set your long and short-term goals. But to achieve those goals and grow your business, your employees need to be aligned with the larger business expectations. 

They need to have proper KRAs (Key Result Areas) that document-

• • • • • • • • how their job roles align with their organization’s goals
              • what key results they are expected to achieve
              • definitive timeline to achieve the results
              • end goals.

              They must be relevant to their roles, clearly stated, fair, a little challenging, and practically attainable. This helps the employees take more ownership of their roles now that they know what success looks like for them. And it consequently leads to higher employee motivation, better productivity, improved performance, clearer communication, faster accountability, better results, and enhanced growth.

               

              Using incentives is another way to ensure employee alignment. If your employees’ tasks have a clear and positive impact on your organizational goals, rewarding them is a great way to make them feel valued and acknowledge their contribution to the overall success of the whole business.

          If you are at this stage of the preparation phase, your employees’ individual goals are aligned with that of the organization, and they are aware of their job responsibilities and the results expected from them. 

          But if there is no growth and development in their careers, they won’t make any significant progress in their roles. They might even start looking for opportunities elsewhere. To prevent this, you need the right sales consulting in Bangalore that will help you develop a robust career roadmap for your employees.

          This helps keep them aware of the opportunities within the organization, increases retention and employee engagement, improves loyalty, and develops their skills.

          One way to do so is to create an Individual Development Plan (IDP), a document that offers insights on

          • • • both short-term and long-term career goals
              • identifying and alleviating weaknesses
              • sharpening relevant skills
              • improving overall career performance

          Furthermore, establishing a strong coaching culture can be incredibly beneficial for the employees’ professional and personal development. They can connect with their seniors, who can guide them through their career paths. This can ensure that your employees are continually learning and growing throughout their journey within the organization, be it-

          • • • onboarding
              • adjusting to remote/hybrid workflow
              • rejoining after prolonged absences
              • internal lateral career pivoting.

          Also, the giving and receiving of feedback enhances communication, strengthens organizational relationships, improves conflict-resolution skills, and aids overall business growth. 

          Now that you have your market segmented, VP written, goals defined, and employees committed and aligned, it is time to attract your customers and build the sales funnel. Stay tuned to find out more about this in the next article of our series, ‘SPANDA Framework’. Get in touch with the best sales consulting for startups & scaleups in Bangalore, India & AbuDhabi, UAE to discover how you can effectively attract your leads, rather than pitching them!