JUSTIFICATION: VALUE PROPOSITION A good friend of mine provides growth capital to businesses ready to scale, so he sees a respectable share of businesses to sample from. He once asked an entrepreneur: DO YOU DESERVE TO BE IN BUSINESS?
I love this question and think about it all of the time! Here’s why: there is no shortage of clever tactics and techniques to extract money from customers without providing much (if any) value in return. The entrepreneurs behind these companies might make a lot of money (at least over the short term)—but they don’t deserve to be in business. If that appeal to morality doesn’t move you, how about this: a sustainable and scalable sales system begins with providing something of value to customers. And the more value you create, the more capacity your engine has to create the desired output—sales. But this wisdom, unfortunately, is not always applied. There are some unscrupulous businesses that know damn well they don’t offer value, yet they continue to take customers’ money. There’s a special place in hell for them. But the vast majority of CEOs and entrepreneurs at least believe they have a strong value proposition that reflects a genuine benefit for customers.
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