Whether you are a top leader, a business or team manager, an entrepreneur, a professional-new or experienced, working in sales, frontline or in the back-office operations, an individual contributor, a Gen X/Y/Z, a homemaker, a volunteer, a student – there is a need to communicate effectively to whoever you want to connect with. There is a need to talk, to be heard, to be listened to, to be understood – it’s a basic human need.
Many things have happened in these last few years such as the digital acceleration and the pandemic that led to virtual and hybrid communication to be the norm. These changed peoples’ lives forever and changed the way people communicate with each other.
Ironically, digital advancements and new ways of working have made effective communication, impactful connections and lasting relationships more challenging and complex – be it at home, work, community or society as a whole.
There have been many researches done that back-up and emphasize the importance of effective communication and connections. One research was done by Jeremy Blain in 2021, which covered 4 regions and 27 countries, where both leaders and the employees responded to a survey of the top important leadership traits they want to see in the workplace. The common top traits identified were empathizing, empowering, engaging.
What can help leaders to develop or enhance these 3 leadership traits – empathetic, empowering, engaging? Our response: craft a powerful value proposition to effectively communicate, influence and persuade.
First, what makes a great value proposition? Based on the definition of Strategyzer.com,
VALUE PROPOSITION describes the benefits customers can expect from an individual, team or company’s products and services.
VALUE MAP (VM) describes the features of a specific value proposition in a business model in a more structured and detailed way. It breaks the value proposition down into: 1) products & services, where a value proposition is built around; 2) gain creators, which describe how products and services create specific customer gains; and 3) pain relievers, which describe how products and services alleviate specific customer pains.
How can you apply the “value proposition map”? VPM can be applied not only to corporate products and solutions, but also to individuals and teams. For example, job applicants can contextualise to themselves and how they can create gains and relieve pains in the job role and company they’re applying for.
Among the many tips to create the most impactful value propositions, here are our favorites:
1. Focus on the most significant jobs, most severe pains, and most relevant gains
2. Focus on unsatisfied jobs, pains, and gains
3. Focus on few pain relievers and gain creators, but do those extremely well
4. Focus on jobs, pains, or gains that a large number of customers have or for which a small number is willing to pay a lot of money
5. Align with how customers measure success
POWERinU Training and Coaching, in Singapore and Philippines, offers workshops, where we train the participants on how to create the value proposition map, all its components and the resulting value proposition statement. From crafting, we then train how to confidently deliver the VP through a 1- to 2-minute elevator pitch, and a storytelling approach for presentations.
References: 1) Strategyzer.com‘s Value Proposition Canvas 2) PWI’s survey results from “The Enlightened Leader” eBook by Jeremy Blain & Paul Marks, 2021