Key Tips for Defining & Sharing Your Unique Value Propositions

To add more context to the blog The EnticEdge Cornerpiece™: What it is & how to use it from July, we want to dive deeper into why now, more than ever, communicating your value proposition succinctly and clearly is of immediate importance. In today’s blog post, we’ll hopefully convince you of the importance of knowing – in simplified, audience-specific language – your company/product/service’s unique value propositions (UVPs) like the back of your hand.

First, it’s important to keep in mind that humans are social beings and our need to connect is essential: “we may not like the fact that we are wired such that our well-being depends on our connections with others, but the facts are the facts.”  When communicating your UVP you should be striving to connect with your counterpart on a core level. And, yes, I know you’ve heard it before, but know your audience, know your audience, know your audience–because the better you know your audience, the stronger your potential for connection is. You should never feel like you’re caught off guard when someone asks you what your product’s UVP is for their specific target audience, otherwise you’ll miss your chance to connect with that audience member (and likely miss out on a new partnership, client, sale, referral, etc.).

In today’s digital age, there are less organic opportunities to network and chat (especially in the midst of a pandemic) so when you’re on a scheduled ½ hour video call, you might only have a slice of that time to actually speak to the value of your company’s product and/or service, or even your personal value as a professional. Don’t get me wrong, there’s value in a video call because you’ll shine through a bit more than in an email or text, but chances are that your words are still crunched among introductions, comments from other people on the screen, technical glitches, and random interruptions and tangents.

The EnticEdge Cornerpiece™ was developed to address that very moment when you risk losing your shot with a valued partner or customer. Included in your Cornerpiece™ is a researched, full breakdown of your company/products’ mission statement and goals on a high-level, as well as a targeted breakdown of unique value propositions for each of your primary audiences or potential customers. We include a user persona for each audience so that you can easily identify which type of audience member you’re engaging with when the moment arises, and a one page document that breaks down that audience’s main pain points and the UVPs that you bring to the table to address those. This not only makes it easy and efficient to communicate your UVPs, but ensures that you’re prioritizing correctly for that audience member, and that your team is all on the same page when speaking about your UVPs.

At our core, we believe in innovation and creativity. So, yes, we hope that you will consider investigating if a Cornerpiece™ is right for your company, but we also hope to see more innovation and creativity make it to market successfully, since it’s better for us all in the long run! With that in mind, we’re sharing some key tips for sharing your UVPs on the spot. So whether you have a Cornerpiece™ at the ready for your next video call, or if you just need a friendly reminder about how to prep for that next surprise opportunity, we have a little advice to help you glide through that moment without a hitch.

1. Create targeted value propositions

Each of those calls could have its nuances and you need to first have clarity on your audience because one message will be stronger for one audience than another and you’ll have more impact when you’ve tailored that value proposition message correctly. Less abstractly, if you’re in healthcare working toward market growth, top priorities for a payer are not often aligned in the same order with those of a hospital health system, and so on, so tailor value propositions accordingly.

2. Think of your UVPs as iterative and be ready to pivot

Those value propositions can change over time; continually vetting them with potential partners and developing new user personas when you’ve added audiences will add necessary clarity as well. Let’s say you have a solution for consumer lending in the financial services space and you’re working to validate its efficacy with a partner company but that takes an unexpectedly long time. In that time the very problem you think you’re innovating for is solved in a different way by someone else. Now what? There might be ways to iterate your solution; there could be ways to partner with another early-stage company to infuse your company with capital that allows for a pivot and creation of a new proof of concept. It could be more simple -- you might need to think about drilling down to sub-audiences -- maybe your solution is needed because that new, competing solution is for larger players and you find yourself tailoring your market strategies for what is now a robust market opportunity with the small to midsize company space in this industry. Will the value proposition messages differ in all these conversations? Yes. How will you have received some feedback to learn these things? You vet what you’re thinking through conversations and connections to confirm or deny so you can be ready with your unique value proposition for each situation. Assuming doesn’t work to bring market traction and growth and staying “stuck in your ways” isn’t effective either. So be ready to iterate and pivot if the moment comes and you’ve done some research and vetting to confirm that the moment is right for a change.

3. Check Your Mission

If you think you’re ready for that company shake up, remember to check in on your company’s mission to ensure your new plans don’t stretch you too far from your core and your resource commitments, and if they do, check in with yourself, your partners, and potentially your investors to remove doubts that it makes sense and is doable. Bringing innovation to market can be exhausting for entrepreneurs. Be ready, check that you’re staying open-minded to ideation and change, and keep at it. It takes time, persistence, and strong UVPs at your fingertips.

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