Executives who believe that beautiful photos of rowing teams actually inspire teamwork hate Despair.com. The Website, which features a series of "de-motivational" products, includes a particularly inspired poster, titled "Individuality." The poster features a close-up shot of snowflakes, and a caption that reads:

"Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else."

It seems that many technology companies operate on this principle. How else to explain the mountain of jargon, acronyms, buzz words and meaningless hyperbole that these companies use to describe their products, services, and the companies themselves?

Take a look at the press releases issued by most technology companies-especially the paragraph that describes the company. In most cases, the paragraph would work equally well for any number of the company's competitors. Or worse, leave you with no idea what the company does. One local technology company describes itself this way:

"Our company provides solutions to manage and optimize business-critical information technology infrastructures, systems and applications. Working across multiple enterprise IT environments, our offerings empower customers to track and maximize the business return associated with IT investments."

If you're fluent in technology-speak you'll know that "solution" usually means "software," and "offerings" means "products." So the company makes software products. But what kind of software products? Vertical applications? ERP? CRM? EAI? Middleware? Monitoring? Or might the company be a Managed Service Provider, or an IT Outsourcing firm? Clearly, this paragraph fails to deliver a clear, compelling Value Proposition.

What's Your Company's Unique Value Proposition?

In Marketing High Technology, Bill Davidow, a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and former Intel executive, discusses how Intel overcame Motorola in the early days of the semiconductor industry. One of the driving principles in both Intel's strategy and Davidow's work is the idea of being "significantly different." He noted:

"It is more important to be significantly different than a little bit better."

Most technology companies fall into the "little bit better" trap. They focus on making their products a little bit smaller, faster, or cheaper-and in so doing set up an un-winnable contest that devalues their own products and focuses the customer on features rather than benefits. The semiconductor, hard drive and telecommunications industries are classic examples. Look at the devastation being "a little bit cheaper" has caused in the telecommunications industry, where AT&T- the industry's icon-has virtually abandoned basic telephone services.

Yet in just about every technology segment, we see a similar pattern:

A company develops a new, "disruptive" technology, which is purchased by early adopters. The product moves toward acceptance by the broader market and competitors appear with products that are less expensive or have more features. The companies promote the fact that their products are interchangeable and start selling on "soft benefits" like customer service. Then, having effectively commoditized the industry, the price wars begin…and everybody loses.

The key to building and owning a dominant position in any market is building and owning a powerful and compelling Value Proposition. And the key to developing a Value Proposition is the phrase "significantly different."

Most technology marketers are smart people, and know how important it is to differentiate their products and services from those of their competitors. But far too many focus their efforts on the wrong things-things that may be important to the company, but are irrelevant to the customer.

Looking Through the Wrong End of the Telescope

This is the biggest mistake made by technology marketers: they focus their differentiation efforts by looking internally-at their product-rather than externally-at their customers. In fact, the only way to be "significantly different" is to first understand what's important to the customer.

CEOs don't wake up in the middle of the night thinking "Tomorrow, I MUST find a solution to manage and optimize my business-critical information technology infrastructures, systems and applications." CEOs spend time worrying about and trying to solve business problems. And companies that can position their products and services as solutions to these problems-or provide quantifiable business benefits-will be the companies who deliver a credible Value Proposition.

But there's a danger in taking this approach too literally. Building a Value Proposition starts with understanding and responding to customers' business problems, but it doesn't end there. What technology marketers often ignore is the importance of the emotional appeal of a Value Proposition.

This is most true, paradoxically, at the highest and lowest ends of the technology food chain. At the low end-commodity products-often the only variable left in the decision-making process is the product's brand. And just as consumers automatically reach for Coke or Pepsi, they'll reach for Kingston or Viking memory products rather than a generic brand.

It's true in the PC market, where the only reason Apple still exists is because of its emotional appeal-because it intimately understands its customers.

And it's true at the highest end of the technology food chain, where the customer is often faced with a "bet the company," or a "bet my job" decision. Thousands of executives have remembered that "Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM," and acted accordingly. Not because IBM laid out a better factual case for getting the assignment; but because IBM's value proposition, stated in overly simplistic terms, is "safest choice for your toughest technology problems."

These companies' Value Propositions separate them from their competitors; entice investors to fund them; encourage their customers to do business with them; and drive their own business development activities.

Developing Your Company's Value Proposition

For these-and other quantifiable business reasons-every company needs its own Unique Value Proposition.

Although it's extremely difficult to do well, and almost impossible to do objectively, the process for creating a Value Proposition is fairly simple and straightforward. The process itself consists of reviewing three distinct elements:

• The customers' needs and motivations
• The company's core competency
• The competition's position in the marketplace

The intersection of these three elements is at the heart of a company's Value Proposition. The final steps in the process are developing a Positioning and Messaging platform that communicates this Value Proposition to all of the company's audiences in a way that is:

• Clear
• Meaningful
• Believable
• Relevant
• Defensible

Finally, the Value Proposition should be tested and then deployed internally, through the company's channel and technology partners, and ultimately to investors, prospects and customers.

The Process: Step-by-Step

Strong companies are built on strong brands, and strong brands are centered on the customer, not on the company or its products. The same is true of a company's Value Proposition: The first step is developing an intimate understanding of the needs and motivations of the customer.

Understanding customer needs and motivations starts with understanding the business environment in which customers operate, and learning how your product or service can help the customer solve a business problem today, or provide a competitive advantage for the customer moving forward. IBM is a good example here, as well, as it maintained its Value Proposition, while migrating from mainframes into software and services.

The trick to uncovering customer needs and motivations is to ask them about their business issues. You need to be prepared to discover that your current customers may not be the right customers; that your current set of products and services won't meet these customers' future needs. But even this news gives you valuable information-it tells you that you need to change your product set or your customer set-before it's too late.

Once you've identified customer needs, the next step is to connect what you offer directly to those needs. To do this, first determine what your company's core competency is; then turn that core competency into a customer solution. FedEx is a great example. The company's core competency is logistics, which enables it to do everything else well. It communicated that message to customers NOT by shouting about logistics, but by communicating in terms that met customers' needs and motivations:

"When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight."

The third step in the process is to review what your competitors are saying. The truth is that it doesn't do you much good to be the third or fourth company in a market saying the same thing-the lack of a Unique Value Proposition doesn't give prospective customers much of a reason to even consider doing business with your company.

The process forces you to find out what the customer really needs; how your company is uniquely suited to meet that need; and how to express this in a way that differentiates you from the competitors. Going through this exercise will have a surprising impact on all aspects of your business-from customer acquisition, to pricing, distribution and product development. And while the information will require some digging and some thoughtful analysis, it's all out there for the taking.

Communicating Your Value Proposition

Once you've defined your Value Proposition, you need to communicate it effectively and consistently to all of your audiences. An effective way to start is to draft a Positioning Platform.

Geoffrey Moore's landmark book Crossing the Chasm includes a format for developing a two-sentence Positioning Platform that includes every relevant message:

FOR (identifies the customer)
WHO (identifies the customer need/motivation)
WE (identifies the company/offering)
THAT (identifies how the company/offering fulfills the need/motivation)

UNLIKE (identifies the competition)
WE (identifies how the company differentiates itself)

This positioning statement is most useful for internal communications, and can be used as the basis for your company's external communications, and its Message Matrix-which identifies your audiences, and re-states the positioning in terms that are meaningful to each. An investor has different motivations than a customer; these differences need to be reflected in the individual messages.

Since the Message Matrix identifies all audiences and what needs to be communicated to each, the logical next step is to use the matrix to outline what kinds of and how many Sales and Marketing activities should be dedicated to each audience.

Your Sales and Marketing teams should now be able to audit the company's sales and marketing materials to ensure that they effectively communicate the new Value Proposition, and identify what new materials are needed. These teams also have primary responsibility for ensuring the ongoing, consistent communication of the company's Value Proposition.

Value Propositions Over Time

Apple is still about innovation. FedEx is still about fast, reliable delivery. IBM is still the safest choice for complex technology problems. But Apple's innovation has extended beyond the GUI into product design. IBM has moved from mainframes to "on-demand IT." And FedEx has expanded to deliver everywhere on the globe-even if not all of the deliveries are overnight. Your Value Proposition needs to evolve as well, to keep your message relevant as your customers and markets evolve.

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A nationally-recognized expert on Branding, Rick Sharga is the President & CEO of CJ Patrick Company (www.cjpatrickcompany.com) , a business strategy firm that helps companies develop Unique Value Propositions and positions of competitive advantage that accelerate growth.

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