Who Defines Your Value

Who ultimately defines your value proposition? If you said Marketing, you get partial credit, but it is the customer that defines it. They vote with their dollars and that wins.

Frequently the defined value proposition is from our point of view. It’s focused on what we sell and not what the customer sees as the value. It is not defined as a product or even a service. It is defined as what that product or service does for the customer. If is defined by what problem, it solves.

I’m working with a start up and a newly appointed sales leader in helping them build out their recruiting process. At first glance that looks like I’m teaching them to interview. That is a piece of it, but not the whole of it. As I was preparing it came to me that I’m helping to solve a problem. The problem is hiring great talent to maximize the growth capabilities for the company. That is much deeper than teaching them the ins and outs of interviewing.

We focus on outcomes. The exercise is to define competencies and values that you wish to hire. Once we define the outcomes desired, we create competencies and values that allow that to happen. We then determine where we find those candidates. It may not be where you think, by the way. We also define the process for interviewing the candidates, the questions asked, and the scoring methodology. Finally, we utilize an assessment tool to validate our findings from the interviews.

Our value to the client is directly tied to hiring talented people that fit their company. It is not a recruiting process. How do we measure success? Revenue gains, retention, company culture and values, and any agreed upon metrics. It’s tough to hire talented people if you don’t define what success looks like.

When you are defining your value proposition, start with the customer and work your way back. What is the customer problem you solve? How do you show a return on investment for the customer? If you can’t do that, you do not have a value proposition. You have a commodity.