A value proposition explains the benefits your business customers will receive from the services you provide, and as importantly, how you uniquely provide those services compared to your competitors. Don’t forget, the less known your organization is, the more effective your value proposition needs to be.
In practice, value propositions are clear statements that explain how your services and solutions solve the customer problems to improve their situation and deliver benefits. Often when workforce and education organizations want to engage businesses they do so by communicating a laundry list of service features versus benefits.
Features are factual statements about a service being discussed or promoted, but they do not engage a prospect. A benefit answers the customer’s question, "What's in it for me?”
When you’re developing value propositions for communicating one-to-one, on the web or in marketing materials, a good strategy is to determine if you are communicating an actual benefit to the prospect.
Examples:
Statement #1: Our organization provides one-to-one recruitment services for businesses in our area.
Statement #1 above is a features statement that contains facts about what the organization provides. This statement alone would not engage an employer prospect.
Statement #2: Our no-cost recruitment services save employers time and money in finding qualified talent.
Statement #2 above provides key benefits of engagement including no-cost and saving time and money, all of which are resources that deeply matter to a business.
Once you understand the differences between communicating features and benefits, conduct a communications audit of your one-to-one talking points, marketing materials and website to make sure that you have included actual benefits, and not just features to the business customer.
And remember this, you are core to your value proposition. What workforce problems to you understand uniquely? What solutions can you uniquely provide in your expanded portfolio of services. For example, what partners can you bring to the table to solve business issues? Lastly, be confident when delivering your value proposition, because what you do is Valuable!
