Developing Your PVP – Personal Value Proposition
Developing Your PVP – Personal Value Proposition
People “buy” you – so how do you differentiate yourself from others? What can you do to attract the people you want, and to be attractive to them? Four steps in this simple template help you do this.
People don’t buy from companies, they buy from people. If people buy from people, then trust is underlying factor why they do so. You need to create, develop and maintain trust with people in order to win business, influence other people, negotiate, persuade, manage conflict and to collaborate.
What people “buy” is you, not “what” you are selling – whether it be a product or service, or trying to persuade someone around to your viewpoint internally or at home. To be able to do this you need to stand out from the crowd and your competitors.
For this you need to have your Personal Value Proposition (PVP).
People are often familiar with value propositions for products and service – the target market segments, the benefits your offerings provide, the value they provide and the pricing. It’s why a target customer should buy the product.
Why a customer should buy your products is focused on not what the product does, but why you do what you do, it is that which inspires you. For an overview of the power of “Why?” click here.
Your “why” is based on your values, beliefs, and your behaviour – how you exhibit your beliefs and demonstrate those strengths which make you stand out. This is the essence of your PVP, and it lies at the heart of why people want to work with you, trust you and build a strong, healthy relationship with you.
How Do You Develop Your PVP?
We intuitively know what our PVP is, but we often fail to make it explicit and easily identifiable to others. To do this we need to develop our PVP. In doing this there are four steps:
- Set a clear target. Be clear on what you want to be known for. You cannot fake this as people will quickly realise this, you need to be authentic. You need to be clear on not just about what you want to be known for, but the kind of people you want to attract. This allows you to target people effectively.
- Establish your strengths – be as clear as you can in identifying these strengths. These fall into several areas:
- What are your personal strengths? – for example, are you a good listener? Empathetic? Able to make the complex simple?
- What are you known for? – for example, your ability to coach people to change their behaviours to help them personally grow and achieve outcomes; your ability to optimise production processes? Your skills in building and developing teams?
- What environments and situations do you enjoy and thrive in? – for example, you have considerable experience in the healthcare industry, or in people development or developing financial solutions.
- Link strengths to target –it is not enough that you know how to link your strengths to your target audience, you need to make it clear to them (that is those who you want to know, and those who you want to know you). You need to be able to understand their perspective as to how you meet their needs and can provide value to them – you need to make yourself meaningful and relevant to them. To do this you need to….
- Demonstrate how you can benefit them – you need to be able to provide evidence and success stories. They are not interested in your strengths but rather what your strengths can do and mean for them. A good analogy is that no-body buys a ¼” drill – they buy ¼” holes; that is people are not so interested in what you do as they are in the outcomes you can help them achieve. As such, your achievements are the evidence you have those strengths e.g. sales growth or cost reduction. They make your case convincing.
Putting It All Together
Below is an example of how this information can be put together.
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1 |
What Do You Want to Be Known For? |
“To be known as the go-to person for those looking to develop their people’s strategic thinking, business acumen and management skills in achieving business results on an on-gong basis”. | ||
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Who You Want to Target? |
“Mid-size companies or divisions of global companies who are experiencing significant changes, challenges to growth and/or the retention and effective development of key people/teams”. | |||
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2 |
Your Strengths |
Personal Strengths | What you are known for. | Environments & Situations? |
These include being able to:
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This includes:
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Environments
Situations
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3 |
Link Strengths to Target |
I work with: | To: | By: |
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Demonstrate |
This can include, for example:
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This template helps to provide focus on how you can develop your Personal Value Proposition from the perspective of your clients or the people you are looking to interact with.
So who are you targeting, what are your strengths and how will you leverage them, what does it mean for these people, and how will you demonstrate it to them?
Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.
