Understanding 'Value Needs'
Get familiar with this concept to bolster your Value creation capabilities
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In last week’s Value Blueprint we delved into the 4 Principles of Value, which are foundational principles that underpin every aspect of Value creation.
In this week’s Blueprint we’re taking a closer look at the concept of the Value needs, which is connected to Principle 1:
Value means doing something or providing your offering, to a client or stakeholder in a way that is meaningful to them / that meets their Value needs.
In the first place, what are Value needs?
The Value needs are basically the full extent of what your client or stakeholders are looking for in an offering, that includes and goes beyond the offering itself.
You might be familiar with the terms “pain point” and “customer needs” (especially if you have a sales or marketing background!):
Pain point: a problem that your prospective or existing clients or stakeholders are experiencing (ideally your offering resolves these)
Customer need: a motive or reason that makes your clients/stakeholders consider purchasing or engaging with your offering (ideally your offering meets these)
On first glance, the definition of Value needs looks pretty similar to both these terms. In fact, all 3 terms are related to each other through how they each reference and touch on the offering in play.
Additionally, your client or stakeholder’s Value needs will almost certainly have a pain point connected to them, and them looking to have that pain point resolved would certainly meet their customer needs.
However, the major difference is the specific “scopes” of each of the terms.
Specific scopes?
Let me explain!
Imagine you’re at work: you’ve had an eventful workday thus far, it’s bordering on lunchtime and you realise you’re absolutely starving. You’ve never been big on pre-packing lunches, and especially not since your office building neighbours a mini-shopping complex with an array of food shops and cafes.
In this moment you have a pain point: “I’m starving”.
You also have a customer need: “I need to eat something, not too heavy since I’m still at work”.
These two are definitely at the front of your mind, but upon setting these you immediately recall a truly heinous experience buying from one of the shops in the mini-mall: the food was okay, but the staff were lowkey rude when you were buying, there was hardly any comfortable sitting space and the shop was super noisy!
So now you’ve also got a Value need wandering around your head: “I need to buy something good from someplace that isn’t a complete pain to buy from, and someplace I can sit comfortably and take a breather from the office”.
(Luckily for you there’s a lovely little sandwich shop in the mini-mall that meets all that. The staff is attentive, the seating areas have well-cushioned seats in designated quiet areas and the sandwiches are good.)
But see how each term had similar but ultimately different scopes?
With the pain point, you’re specifically centering on your experience: this is an issue you’re having, and you want something (an offering) to make it go away.
With the customer need, these are your expectations of the offering specifically: you’re expecting that the offering solves the pain point, full stop.
The Value need zooms you out of that focus on the offering the first two have, and asks “outside of the offering itself, how much more can I get?”
The little sandwich shop won over the shop with the terrible experience not only because their food was better, but also because they offered a better experience that went beyond their offering (which was the food they sold).
Interesting also to note that
the pain point referenced one thing,
the customer need took the pain point and expanded on it,
and the Value need took the customer need, expanded on it even further and contextualised it (Shout out to Principle 3 of the Principles of Value!)
How can the Value needs be discovered?
Discovering your clients’ or stakeholders’ Value needs is very important because the measure of success in your delivery of Value is entirely how well your offering meets that client or stakeholder’s Value need.
In a lot of cases your clients or stakeholders would provide this information to you in your initial ‘know your client’ (KYC) conversations, in which case you’d find our their Value needs by directly interviewing or engaging them. However there are conditions under which that’s not possible, or your stakeholders might not volunteer this information very easily.
Maybe info on their Value needs is not complete or they can’t quite explain it themselves, or, maybe you’re participating in a funding call or a competition. Or maybe they mistrust you in some way so they keep the full scope of their needs close to their vest.
Suffice it to say there are ways to fully uncover their unspoken Value needs in each of these cases. In fact I’ve hosted a workshop on this in the past and I’ll be putting out a tool to help businesses and NPOs do just that for their tougher clients and stakeholders soon. I’ll keep you posted on that!
And that’s this week’s Blueprint done!
Did you end up learning a little more about Value in this week’s edition? What are some of the ways you uncovered your clients’ or stakeholders’ Value needs?
Tell me more in the comments, drop me a line on LinkedIn, or if you received this an email, send me a reply!