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Beyond developing a basic understanding of the target audience for your business’s marketing message, one of the first steps toward honing a solid marketing strategy involves the value proposition, or unique value proposition.

A value proposition clearly describes why your target market should buy your company’s products and services. And it accomplishes that in one sentence. Sadly, B2B companies rarely develop this important marketing tool.

An effective unique value proposition includes one of the primary reasons why a prospect should buy from you. The magic of a truly effective value proposition is that it will snap your prospective customer out of the “everything’s going just fine and we don’t want to bother with a change now” mindset. When you can clearly express the significant advantage of your offering, you will get immediate attention.

Keep in mind that business clients have heard countless marketing spiels, and are quite immune to sales hype. They couldn’t care less about how long your business has been around, how much experience you have or the quality of the product you offer. The questions they are really interested in are these: “What’s in it for me?” and “Why should I buy from you?”

Making your potential customers see the real world value your products and services offer them is how you will convince them to buy from you. This means producing solid figures and percentages that can be backed up with facts. That will let companies consider how their bottom line can improve with your help.

Think about two possible value propositions for the same company:

1. “We offer a full range of consulting services to help companies save money.”

2. “We help companies improve operational efficiency and reduce corporate waste. One of our current customers was able to increase profits by $80,000 only one quarter after implementation.”

The first example sounds vague and uninteresting at best. Every company wants to save money, but the value proposition gives no specifics regarding what the result will be. It sounds like a zillion other “blah blah blah” sales calls. By using the second value proposition, you can drive home the specific impact that the business could experience by adopting your offering. After hearing figures like these, no sane chief financial officer can turn you away.

Ray Perry is an Internet marketing executive with more than 25 years of experience. He is the Chief Marketing Officer at Market Blazer, a small business marketing company and authorized Duct Tape Marketing coach. You can get more information about value propositions at www.MarketBlazer.com.