Syllabus·Day Two·Rev 2.0

Day Two Description

Day One asked why the prospect does not see your page. Day Two asks a harder question: once they do see it, why should they choose you rather than anyone else? The whole answer lives in one word — because.

Index · Day Two Description+

Day One

Day Two

Course-Wide

What this day is about

A value proposition is not a slogan, a mission statement, or a list of features. It is the answer to a question your prospect is already asking silently, in the first person:

“If I am your ideal prospect, why should I buy from you rather than any of your competitors?”

Every real answer to that question implies the word because. Day Two is about finding your because, measuring its force, and — the harder half — expressing it so that the prospect reaches the conclusion themselves rather than being told it.

The distinction the whole day turns on

Fostered conclusions, not boastful claims. A claim is something you assert about yourself. A conclusion is something the prospect arrives at. The first is free and worth roughly what it costs. The second has to be engineered, and it is the only one that converts.

Provenance

Where this comes from

The framework taught here was not assembled from opinion. It was derived in three steps: a review of 120 years of commercial literature on the idea of a “proposition” — Starch, Hopkins, Reeves, Ogilvy, Drucker, Kotler, Porter, Lanning; a review of more than 1,100 published academic articles from scholars including Vargo, Lusch, Anderson, Narus, Van Rossum, Payne and Frow; and a working collaboration between the leading academic and commercial thinkers on the subject. Session 3 walks that derivation, including the four eras of the value-proposition timeline and the point at the end of it where the term fractured into a dozen overlapping labels with no shared meaning.

At a glance

Day Two at a glance

Session 3

The Value Proposition as Compass. Where the concept came from, the three-point dialogue beneath it, the Value Proposition Heuristic, and how to locate a value proposition — yours, a colleague's, and a competitor's.

4 in-class exercises · 1 competitive claims lab

Session 4

Fostered Conclusions Over Boastful Claims. The two dyads — Appeal × Exclusivity, Clarity × Credibility — the four cognitive conclusions, the three deadly errors, and the culminating Quick-Win Intensive on your own material.

3 in-class exercises · 1 culminating intensive

Day Two is deliberately a little shorter than Day One in instruction and a good deal longer in application. The centre of gravity is the intensive, not the lecture.

Continue on demand

Where Day Two continues in the library

Day Two references the on-demand FastClass library directly. Units Three and Four of Become a Marketer-Philosopher are entirely value-proposition material and are the natural continuation between the live day and your own application work.

Unit 3 · 18

Value Proposition Definition

Session 3 — the value proposition question and its four attributes. Referenced by name during the day.

Unit 3 · 19

Value Proposition Danger

Session 4 — the three deadly errors: substance, form, location.

Unit 3 · 20

Value Proposition Credibility

Session 4 — the communication dyad, and “I believe this.”

Unit 4 · 21

Value Proposition Power

Session 4 — appeal, exclusivity, and intensifying net force.

Unit 4 · 22

Value Proposition Strategy

The culminating intensive — carrying one corrected value proposition into the rest of the funnel.

Units One and Two — customer profile, objectives, wireframes, headlines and above-the-fold — support Day One. Unit Five carries the work forward into calls to action.

Session 2 Heuristics