Prompts for Creative Business Thinking
Customer/investor/audience avatar and the value proposition checklist questions
Create a customer, investor, or audience avatar. Think about what a typical representative of your target cares about?
What is their current experience?
What are the things that frustrate them?
What are they worried about?
What should they be worried about that they don’t even KNOW they should be worried about?
What are some things that would help them be more successful? What limits their success?
What are the things around them that are impacting their business, their finances, or any other aspect of their lives critical to your product or service?
What are their requirements or what do they want/need from you (even if they don’t know it yet)?
Additional questions for your avatar:
What are the things other people ask them to do or answer?
What kinds of information do they need at their fingertips?
What is their current level of understanding about what you are talking about?
What do they enjoy?
If they could spend one day doing anything they wanted, what would it be?
What preoccupies them?
What are the things they spend their time doing at work? At home? Whatever environment is the most aligned with what you do or what you are offering.
Are there things about their demographics that you think might indicate certain preferences?
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Prompts to explore your value proposition:
How is your audience’s world different without your product/service/issue in it?
How is your audience’s world different with your product/service/issue in it?
What are the three most important messages about the value of my product or service?
What are the most common objections and how can your product/service overcome them?
For the complex subject matter, what is something “everyday” that might be similar in function or how it works. The solution is like “X” in that it does “Y.”
For example, my solution allows for a single signon to access all of the areas of the system. It works a lot like a master key for an apartment complex allowing you to seamlessly access every unit without having to carry a ring of keys like Schneider from “One Day At A Time.”
What are some of the messages used by your competitors or businesses that are somewhat comparable?
How does my product work (in three sentences or less)?
Additional questions for your value proposition:
What are the risks facing my business/service/issue? How am I addressing those risks? Will they change over time?
What are the requirements of your audience (what do they need or want from you?) and how will you address them?
What do I want the target audience to do? In a perfect world, what would happen after they listen to my pitch or read my article?
What happens if your target audience does nothing? For example, does the situation get worse? If so, how?
What happens next if your target audience does what you want them to do? For example, what comes next if you get the funding? What will be different or improved for your company? What can the investor expect to see?
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