If you cannot say what you do in a sentence, the market will write one for you.
Being unable to explain your value in one sentence means the business has no short form of its own story, so every conversation starts from scratch and every listener leaves with a slightly different impression. The long version usually exists and is often good, and it has never been cut down to something a person can remember and repeat.
The sentence matters because it is the version that travels. It is what a customer repeats to a colleague, what a board member uses to describe you to a peer and what an AI engine returns when somebody asks what the company does, and your deck is absent from all of those moments.
Dan Ilett leads The Proposition and chairs the City CIO Club, an invitation-only peer network for senior technology leaders in the City of London. He was commercial transformation director at a FTSE technology business and, as a journalist, wrote for the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph. The Proposition works with B2B companies in the UK, Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia Pacific from its base in London, and customer interviews are held wherever your buyers are. If this reads like your business, start with a conversation about what is happening in your pipeline. You can book a meeting directly or use the contact page and Dan will come back to you.
Tell us what you sell, who you sell it to and what is coming up. We will come back within a working day.
You can also book a meeting directly or email hello@theproposition.co.