Your Offering is Not Moving - Understand Why
Your offering has always been SUPER important; now look at it with a Value lens!
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It’s edition 2 of Qualified for Value, a 10 part newsletter series walking you through the applied aspects of Value creation!
Now that you’ve set the foundation with the Value Proposition, the next stop in setting your enterprise up for Value is your Value offering.
But in the first place what is a Value offering? It may seem a little obvious at first glance, but to fully understand this term down to the roots, we’ll need to break the term into two parts: Value / offering.
The offering is basically the product or service you’ve created that you are offering to your clients, stakeholders, partners and investors.
For success, your offering needs to be pretty damn good to beat out the competition and get the attention of those people.
Historically it was enough for your offering to just be really good, however now they’re looking for more than just good offerings.
They simply won’t take what you’re offering them unless you offer them something that goes beyond; a whole package.
That “whole package” is Value, and that’s where the Value part of the term comes in.
So together: your Value offering is your product or service, MODIFIED by the factors that go beyond (but still connected to!) what your offering is, which further strengthen your offering.
This consideration of factors that go beyond the offering and the using of them to strengthen your offering is called Value offering development within Value Innovation.
You can think of it as the process of building in Value into your base offering.
That built in Value is what makes your offerings appealing to your target groups!
Now build out your Value offering!
I’ve got 3 simple tactics you can use to start your Value offering development journey. As you work, be sure to keep these two things to keep in mind:
Firstly: the process is important, but it isn’t supposed to be this enormous and complicated undertaking! Don’t overwhelm yourself.
Secondly: as you develop your Value offering, keep your Value Proposition (the statement of the Value you wish to deliver), and your clients’ Value needs (the Value your clients are looking to gain from an offering like yours) in mind.
These two are your guard-rails, and make sure your Value offering ends up actually being relevant.
Specialize what you’re offering
Ensure your offering captures a specific niche that you have expertise in, and can dominate.
For example: let’s say you’re a podcaster, and that’s your offering. You’re looking to get paid to speak on your expertise.
(I’ve specifically chosen this as example because of how challenging it can be for creatives to build out compelling Value offerings!)
As it is, that’s not very compelling; everyone’s a podcaster these days. But you have a specific interest in how consumerism negatively impacts society, mental health and have developed expertise in ways one can build a life that’s not as reliant on consumerist behaviours.
So in specializing your offering, your podcast content focuses on practicable ways people can develop good mental health habits at each stage of their lives, from youth to elderly adult, without coming out of one’s pocket.
(a concept that’s becoming EXTREMELY relevant in today’s social and economic climate!)
Now you’re not just yapping, you’re yapping with a cause!
Explore ways to expand your offering’s reach
Your offering needs to go beyond what it is; find ways that it can do that.
Using our podcaster example, your offering can go beyond by way of collaborative efforts between yourself and actual mental health services in your listeners’ actual locales.
Every so often, your show collaborates with a mental health clinic in a given area for a live recording of that week’s episode at that clinic, in whatever capacity you can manage. The live recording may even inviting ordinary attendees, and having activities and engagement with them!
It doesn’t even have to be that big, but see how your offering went from just being you and maybe a guest in a room talking, to now an offering that engaged so many more people?
And how you created Value not only for yourself as the podcaster, but also the mental health clinic, the would-be attendees and everyone else who’d benefit from the activities? That is expanded reach!
Showcase your Value offering, compellingly
Showcasing it in enticing ways is often the difference between successful engagements and failure.
So how exactly would all this put money in your pocket? When you start showcasing it to prospective clients and investors.
Within this example, you’re looking to find sponsors for your show, and for any on-the-road activities you may have. You’re also looking to be hired to speak on anti-consumerist mental health.
As it stands you’ve already got a very interesting offering in two directions even!
The thing you’re talking about is already enticing because nobody else is speaking about it in the way you do, with your expertise
By establishing and growing your audience AND successfully collaborating with clinics, you’ve established 2 groups of real people that your sponsors can now access, through you
The magic here is understanding the exact kind of Value your target sponsor are looking to create with that expertise and access of yours in their hand, because that then tells you the way you can entice them.
For instance: if you know a given medical aid company is building a name for itself as THEE premier company to approach for mental health services, and thus has the Value need of “we must do things that signal to audiences that we look at mental health in innovative ways”, you’ve now got a Value offering that appeals to them!
It’s a matter of positioning it in a way that connects your offering as a solve for their Value need!
Value offering development is an enormously fun and rewarding process that’s often the big difference between enterprises that have ‘once in a while’ success and those who’ve unlocked consistent wins. Be sure to leverage it!
But before you go!
If you need expert technical expertise in developing your Value offering, or you just need a specialist to review what you’ve put together, look no further than the Value Creation Suite over at Vivre Consulting!
Our Value Creation consulting offerings are customized to you and your enterprise, tailored for every stage of your enterprise’s development and journey.
Like my work? You can get more of it!
Listen to my podcast, Inside Value, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube
(be sure to subscribe!)Book me to speak or host a workshop at your event, company or organization
Check out our Value Creation Toolkit and the rest of our work at Vivre Consulting
Connect with me on LinkedIn!