Positioning for Professionals: How Professional Knowledge Firms Can Differentiate Their Way to Success

Chapter 7. Validating Your Value Proposition

After you've taken your firm through the journey of building an effective value proposition, how do you know you've arrived at your destination? The best place to start is to make sure you've struck the right balance between authenticity and aspiration (see Figure 7.1).

A positioning that's too authentic is too focused on where the business was instead of where the business is going. On the other hand, a value proposition that's too aspirational is a shot in the dark based more on hopes than on abilities. The best solution isn't to draw the line right in the middle of the spectrum, but rather to err on the side of aspiration. Your value proposition must be looking even more to the future than to the past; otherwise you'll be cycling back to the reinvention process much sooner than you either want or need to.

Figure 7.1. The Balance of Authenticity and Aspiration

BE ROOTED IN THE FUTURE, NOT THE PAST

If you base your value proposition only on facts, you will be defining a position for the present and the past, but not one for the future. Data can tell you only what has happened, not what will happen. Facts don't predict the future—only a theory predicts the future.^[63]

Your value proposition must be based not on where the money is, but where the money will be. And to know where the money will be, requires that you have a well-founded theory about ...