Your value proposition is your competitive advantage and is directly related to what your customers want. Few things, if any, are more important to your success. See if any of these questions reflect your experience.
Do you feel overwhelmed trying to create your value proposition? [quotesright]Have you tried projects that seemed to create great value but that your prospects and customers didn’t buy, [/quotesright] even though they consumed your budget and ate up scarce human capital resources? Have you been frustrated by unproductive meetings and disappointed by misaligned teams that consumed time like candy and produced little of value?
Here are some simple things you can do to define your true Value Proposition:
- Begin your investigation of how you create value by identifying and understanding your customers and what they want. Organize the information in a simple way, and look for patterns that would allow you to identify and align your products with your customers’ needs. [quotesright]Doing this will allow you to gain clarity, which will result in your ability to develop an effective, customer-focused value proposition[/quotesright] that leads to a profitable business model. It’s all a matter of targeting what matters most to your customers.
- Align your team by using effective, clear, and inclusive communication to create a common language that your team will be able to buy into and take ownership of your strategy. Taking this approach will allow you to leverage your team’s experience, knowledge, and skills. This will lead to more meaningful, productive, and enjoyable meetings and actionable outcomes that create value for your customers and your business.
- Reduce your risk by avoiding projects that waste your time and resources by incessantly testing the premises underlying your ideas and projects. This will allow you to [quotesright]pursue big bold ideas[/quotesright] that complement your existing projects and processes to maximize on your resources and yield higher ROI.
Your value proposition comes to life for your target market when you effectively design and test it before you implement your strategy. Tune up your value “off Broadway” before you roll it out. [quotes]A simple tweak or insight can pay disproportionally high dividends.[/quotes] Furthermore, as conditions change, and technology advances, so do your customers’ needs and wants and your value propositions must continually evolve to keep you relevant to customers.
- by Shohreh R Aftahi, MBA, PhD
FocalPoint Business Performance Coaching
pathtofullpotential.com