Often, people mistake value proposition for an elevator speech, as in, “My name is Joe and Acme Corporation always provide you with the right contractor for the job because we meet them first. We provide great service and a great price because we want your business.”

Then the elevator door opens. Exhale.

While an elevator speech can serve its purpose, for instance, when you meet a potential customer in an elevator, it’s one-sided. It involves the sales rep telling something rather than showing it, or listening to the prospect. A better way to develop a value proposition is to match your capabilities— what can you provide to the customer— with what the customer needs.

In his Business Review Weekly article, Peter Finkelstein, head of sales strategy at Barrett Consulting, suggests to start by finding out what prospects are being measured on. What are they expected to achieve in the next 12 to 18 months? Maybe they have to lower supply-chain costs, or perhaps they are expected to boost customer retention or to reduce time-to-market on new products. Whatever it is, this is the business driver for a value proposition.

A value proposition has two sides to it. The first is based on what your company can do as a business. It’s an internal perspective. Equally important are the customer’s needs. Without the customer needs side of the value proposition, it is all about your perceptions, or misperceptions, about the customer. By understanding the customer’s business and challenges— rather than assuming you already know — you can build a better value proposition.

Add to this are the four different levels of value proposition that you’ll want to learn to incorporate into your sales story:

1. Corporate level — the value proposition at this level is the most general. Its message applies to the company’s market as a whole, as well as the general public. This message should be clear to the industry the business specializes in as well as those who may come across the company’s website out of happenstance. This message often follows the vision and mission statements in a presentation.
2. Segment level — the segment level of a value proposition focuses more on what’s important to a specific industry or customer group. When thinking about a value proposition at this level, consider any changes happening within that industry or within that company. Staying on top of current events that affect a client will allow a company to modify their services to meet needs as they arise.
3. Account level — this level takes the segment level proposition further by addressing the needs of a specific customer. At the account level, the unique challenges of an organization or customer group, how a company can help solve those challenges, and why a company can provide a better solution than the competition should all be addressed.
4. Deal level — the deal level adjusts the value proposition to address a specific situation and how a company can offer a better solution than the competition.  On the surface, the deal level may seem like a simple sales message, but when examined closely it is a custom solution that has been carefully considered for the client in question.

These four levels are designed to give a company a framework for their value proposition. They can move through each level in a customer conversation and draw upon points that are relevant to that specific customer.

How and when to move across value proposition levels, requires judgment to leverage the internal capabilities and the customer’s needs. At its best, the value proposition will become a simple, concise message a company can easily remember and communicate. Most important, of course, is that the customer can easily remember it, too.