Unless You Can Spell Out The Value You Add - You Are Toast!

Think about their performance and what they deliver. Can you name your best performers?

Next, think about businesses that you know. Can you name a small handful of the best performing businesses that you know?

Now comes some mind reading. Step inside my Gypsy tent, as I look deep into my crystal ball. As the incense haze clears, I predict that your top performing people and businesses all have one thing in common.

They know the value they add to you and are not afraid to draw your attention (either subtly or complete with marching bands and baton twirlers) to how good they are.

Let me explain. Yes, Maude in accounts may be a quiet achiever, but is she the one who gets the big pay-rises and promotions? Generally, quiet achievers remain quietly doing the same job year in year out. The person who is promoted is the person who at interview or performance reviews, can clearly state "I delivered XYZ through... which resulted in..."

The Value Mantra

I used to teach people a mantra for answering selection criteria or questions "I did... How I did it was... and how I knew it was successful was..." The people who took this mantra and applied it well, were the ones who gained promotions either within my team or for promotional positions elsewhere.

In business, who demands (and gets) the higher fees? The business you have never heard about, or the business whose walls are wallpapered with testimonials to their greatness, who regularly appear in award ceremonies and who are talked about in glowing terms in the media.

Are the successful business websites the ones whose websites are all about them, or the ones who tell you in complete and compelling terms exactly what results you will get from working with them and what brilliant results your business can expect from investing in their services.

And, the winners are... the ones who can demonstrate the value that they add. Or, to put it another way, the difference that they make.

What value do you add?

So, do YOU know the value that you add? Can you clearly articulate the 7 or 10 points of difference people get from working with you?

It is not as easy as it sounds. You need to look at both the financial and emotional difference people get from working with you.

To find this out, you could take your team away for a planning weekend, surrounded by reams of butcher's paper. You could think through all of the things that make your team great and document them into a list.

This is a good starting point, but the problem is that value is not defined by the person giving it - but by the person receiving it. There is a saying that an item is only as worth as much as someone is prepared to pay for it. The only way to find "what is the value" is to ask the person on the receiving end.

How can you find this out from your clients? You can ask them about the value that they perceive you can add at the beginning of working with them through targeted questioning, or you can do this at the end as part of the feedback process where you explore the things that your clients liked and valued about working with you.

Another technique is through working with a good copywriter or marketer who can put themselves in the place of the client and help you identify the value you add. By having an external viewpoint, you will get more accurate value definitions than if you do it "in-house".

Whichever way you choose to define your value, the key is to articulate the value that you add to people. If you can do this - you will achieve much higher success than if you are simply a quiet achiever.

Ingrid Cliff is a Brisbane copywriter and the Chief Word Wizard of Heart Harmony - her writing services studio that helps put your business into words. Visit her website for a free copy of Copywriting Secrets: Seven Secrets of Compelling Copy and Powerful Words.