Building the proposition from what buyers said rather than from what the company believes.
A customer value proposition is written from the buyer's side. It starts with the problem as they describe it, in the words they use, and it states what changes for them rather than what your product contains.
The distinction sounds academic until you read a company's website next to a transcript of one of its customers. They rarely sound like they are discussing the same thing.
Before the day I speak to a handful of your recent buyers and, where you will allow it, people who chose somebody else. Those conversations go long enough to get past the polite version, which usually takes about twenty minutes.
What comes back is a set of quotes rather than a report. The quotes go into the session unedited, because a summary lets a leadership team argue with the interpretation instead of the evidence.
The group reads the buyer language first and writes second. Pains get ranked by what buyers spent money to solve rather than by what the group finds most interesting. The reason people chose you gets compared with the reason the company has been claiming, and where those differ the buyer wins.
By the end the proposition uses the buyer's vocabulary throughout. That matters beyond honesty, because those are the words people type into a search box and repeat to their colleagues.
Then that is the first job. A proposition agreed internally describes the company to itself.
Most will, and they say more to somebody who does not work for you.
Enough that you stop hearing new things, which happens sooner than people expect.