The Essential Message » The Essential Message Self-Assessment

The Essential Message Self-Assessment

What’s really working and what’s not working with your Essential Message and in your business? The Essential Message Self-Assessment is designed to help you find out.

These questions are designed to be appropriate for a wide range of businesses from solopreneurs to larger organizations. Please answer the intent of the questions as appropriate to your individual situation.

Step 1
For each of the following, rank how well you feel you are doing. A low score would indicate that you have a long way to go before you can confidently say you’re doing well in this area, while a high score would indicate that everything in this area is going along extremely well, and no improvement is needed. Don’t think too hard about it. You can complete the ranking portion of the assessment in less than one minute!
A) Symptoms & Challenges
1. When someone asks you (or your salespeople), ‘what do you do?’, you feel extremely confident about the way that you (or your salespeople) describe your business.
2. You (or your company) are known as an expert in your field (ie: You often get asked for interviews and journalists call you when they’re doing a story on your topic.)
3. You get a lot of referrals from strategic partners and existing clients.
4. Customers and clients see an obvious and compelling reason to choose you over competitors.
5. Customers and clients understand your value proposition very quickly.
6. Your website, sales literature and marketing materials all present a consistent (and compelling) message.
7. Marketing and branding are easy for you – you spend little and get a lot of mileage from your initiatives.
8. Your products/services are priced extremely well, with high return (for you) for the amount of work you put into them.
9. There’s a high degree of consensus and agreement among your advisors or board or directors/executive team about strategic issues.
10. You (or your salespeople) know how to engage potential clients in conversation about what you offer and how you can help them.
11. You know exactly who your clients are and where to find more of them.
B) Core Issues
1. You know your true differentiation in your market -- what sets you apart from everyone else in your market space.
2. You can identify the pain points that your clients have and problems they would readily acknowledge in conversation.
3. You can define the core challenge that you solve for your clients – the root cause of their pain points -- in one sentence.
4. You not only know what results you promise your clients, you also know how you achieve them so well.
5. You know what your potential clients are skeptical about.
6. You have a deep understanding of your personal motivation – why you are driven to do what you do, and how it is directly related to your (your company’s) true purpose.
7. You can easily complete this sentence: ‘I/we are absolutely brilliant at… and that is exactly the piece that other people/companies in our field either gloss over or skip entirely.’
Step 2
Now look over the scores that you gave yourself. What stands out in your mind as the key area(s) to improve or focus on? (Again, answer quickly and be brief.)
Step 3
Why do you want to improve this/these areas? (Please be specific: either they are creating a bigger problem that you need to resolve or they will help you make progress toward a bigger goal.)
Step 4
Do you think that the Essential Message approach can help? If yes, how and why?
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The Essential Message Self-Assessment

Step 1

A) Symptoms & Challenges

B) Core Issues

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Your Contact Information

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