“Describe what you do in 60 seconds. Now describe what you do in 30 seconds. Can you tell me what you do in 5 words? That’d be even better.”
Building technology and delivering great products alone will not drive a business forward unless you can explain what you do and why you do it. Getting people to understand this starts with a value proposition.
A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered and acknowledged and a belief from the customer that value will be delivered and experienced. A value proposition can apply to an entire organization, or parts thereof, or customer accounts, or products or services.
For us, we came into the Iowa Startup Accelerator with a fairly straightforward value proposition: An easy way to order flowers online when time is your most valuable asset.
After lots of pitches and discussions with mentors, we quickly realized there was an easier way to say this sentence: Save time buying flowers online.
The second version was more efficient and said the same exact thing in less words. It also emphasized what we found in customer discovery, which was that saving time was a huge motivator for people who choose which service to buy from.
We were ready to roll — or so we thought.
We started to pitch our value prop during our Monday morning pitch and were hit with objections from the people who know our startup better than anyone else: our mentors and our customers. They challenged us to re-evaluate our statement and see if it truly captured the aspects our customers love the most about Goquets.
These aspects include the personalization of each order, the creativity of the arrangements, the flowers themselves and the ease of use when ordering. A checkout that takes less than three minutes was more of a bonus to our customers, rather than the main reason for buying flowers.
So… we kept at it. While putting dozens of words and phrases on the drawing board to sum up our business in 7 words or less, the wheels started spinning. It was around this time when one of the ISA mentors Kimm Harris stepped in with a great point: “Let your customer create your value proposition for you. Use the words they use, not the words you think they should use”
While we were originally focused on words such as: reaction, time, creative and unique, we found our customers were using the words: quick, easy, awesome and amazing. Thanks to a mentor meeting with Paul Kongshaug, we found a pattern and it became obvious that these high repetition words were standing out.
And finally, a new value proposition has been born:
Amazing flowers, quick and easy.
That’s right, 5 words describing our business. Boo-yah.
Can it be tweaked? Of course. Will it change someday? Who knows. It continues to hit home with the people who order from Goquets today as we continue to prove we can be fast, easy and amazing. We owe it to them, especially as they helped us figure out our new value proposition 😉.
Overview
At Goquets, we’re working to become the easiest way to order flowers online. Stop wasting time scrolling through galleries only to see the flowers that are delivered look nothing like the photo you spent ages choosing. Tell us the details you actually care about — who it’s for, what the occasion is, and how much you want to spend and we’ll work with a local florist to build a beautiful, one-of-a-kind bouquet.
Stay tuned each week as we continue to talk about our experience going through a 3-month accelerator for Goquets at the Iowa Startup Accelerator in Cedar Rapids.
Other Updates:
Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8
Reach out to us with any questions or thoughts:
Email Us: hello@goquets.com
