You don’t need a six-week workshop to improve your value proposition. Three honest questions, answered by leadership and cross-checked against what customers actually say, will surface most of the problem in an afternoon.
Question 1: Could a competitor say this exact sentence?
Run your value proposition through this test line by line. “We deliver quality service,” “our team has deep expertise,” “we’re customer-focused”, all of these could be lifted directly onto a competitor’s homepage without anyone noticing. If a claim survives this test, it’s not yet a differentiator; it’s table stakes, and it isn’t doing any real work for you.
The fix isn’t to write a more polished version of the same claim, it’s to replace it with something specific: a process only you run, a guarantee only you offer, an outcome only you can prove with a number attached to it.
Question 2: What do we solve that the alternative leaves broken?
Most value propositions describe features or general benefits. Few describe the specific problem left unsolved by the next-best alternative, whether that alternative is a competitor, an in-house effort, or doing nothing at all. Naming that gap directly is what turns a generic claim into a real reason to choose you over every other option on the table.
This question also forces a useful discipline: it requires genuinely understanding what alternatives your buyer is actually weighing, which should come directly out of your competitive and market analysis work, not out of an internal brainstorm that never leaves the building.
Question 3: Can we prove it?
A value proposition without evidence is a claim. The same value proposition backed by a number, a named client result, or a documented process is a reason to believe. If your current value proposition can’t be immediately followed by “here’s how we know,” it’s still aspirational rather than credible — and B2B buyers doing independent research long before they ever talk to a rep are actively looking for exactly that kind of proof before they’ll engage. According to Demand Gen Report’s survey findings covered by Fello Agency, 75% of buyers want proof of expertise specific to their industry and 72% want evidence a vendor has actually solved their particular pain point, generic proof doesn’t satisfy that bar. UserEvidence’s original research on this “evidence gap” found that buyers consistently want quantitative proof or a tailored business case over polished testimonials, which is exactly why Question 3 has to produce a number or a name, not just a confident sentence.
How do you put this into practice this week?
-
- Write your current value proposition on a whiteboard, one claim per line.
-
- Run each line through all three questions above.
-
- Flag any line that fails Question 1, a competitor could say it verbatim, for a rewrite.
-
- For every line that survives, attach the proof point from Question 3: a stat, a client name, a specific documented process.
-
- Feed the surviving, provable claims into your next round of web content and paid ad copy, so the language your prospects see is consistent everywhere.
Why does this matter beyond the marketing team?
Because a value proposition that survives all three questions is one your sales team will actually use on live calls, instead of quietly writing their own version because marketing’s version doesn’t hold up under real buyer questions. This exercise pairs directly with the sales enablement and marketing alignment work we run with every client during the first weeks of the accelerator.
What mistakes derail this exercise most often?
The most common one is treating the three questions as a wordsmithing exercise instead of an evidence exercise. A team will rewrite “we provide excellent service” as “we provide exceptional, award-winning service” and consider Question 1 solved, but a competitor can say that just as easily. The fix has to change what’s actually being claimed, not just how enthusiastically it’s phrased. The second common mistake is skipping Question 3 for claims that feel obviously true internally. If nobody outside the company can independently verify a claim, it isn’t proof yet, no matter how confident the team is in it. The third is running this exercise once and never repeating it, competitors reposition, buyer priorities shift, and a value proposition that survived all three questions eighteen months ago may not survive them today. Building that discipline in is part of the broader digital marketing services work we do with clients on an ongoing basis, not just at kickoff.
How long should this exercise take? Most leadership teams can run all three questions against their current value proposition in 60–90 minutes. The harder, longer work is proving the surviving claims with real evidence.
Who should be in the room? Leadership, sales, and whoever owns customer success or delivery — the people who actually know whether a claim is provable in the real world.
What if none of our claims survive Question 1? That’s common, and it’s not a failure — it means your differentiation lives somewhere you haven’t articulated yet, whether that’s a process, a guarantee, or a specific outcome. The next step is a deeper positioning exercise, not just a copy rewrite.
How often should we redo this exercise? Quarterly is reasonable for a fast-growing company; annually at minimum for anyone else, or immediately after a new competitor enters your space.