What is true about you, and what you can prove

The claim inventory: every claim that matters to a buyer, with the evidence next to it.

As it is usually taught: know your strengths. Write down your unique selling points and lead with them.

What it really asks of you is stricter. Not "what sounds good", but two questions asked together: what is true about us that matters to a buyer, and what evidence do we have for it? The answer is a list. We call it a claim inventory: every claim you want to make, and next to each one, the proof.

Claims a buyer can check are a different kind of claim

"High quality" is a claim nobody can check. "Tested to EN standards, report available on request" is a claim anyone can check. The second kind does something the first kind cannot: it lets the buyer stop taking your word for it. Every claim you can move from the first kind to the second kind makes every future communication easier to write and easier to believe.

Evidence comes in more forms than test reports. Years in operation. Named customers who agreed to be named. Photographs of your actual production. Certificates. Delivery statistics. A specification sheet with real numbers where competitors write "excellent performance".

The list is written once and used everywhere

The claim inventory is not a communication. It is the store from which every communication draws. You write it once, revise it rarely, and check every future text against it: is this claim on the list? Is the evidence still current? A message that cannot be traced back to the list is a message you are not ready to send.

The list also shows you what is missing. A claim that matters to buyers, with no evidence behind it yet, is not a writing problem. It is a task: get the test done, collect the reference, measure the number. Marketing work that produces evidence outlasts marketing work that produces text.

This week

Start the list. Ten claims that matter to a buyer, and for each one, the evidence you hold today. Mark the claims where the evidence is missing or old. That marked list is your marketing plan, in one page.