Be the Value

Value is in the eye of the beholder. There are lots of different ways to think about value. But you can be the biggest part of the value proposition.

Your Business Acumen
You create value by understanding fundamental business principles. You understand how what you do is translated into greater revenue, lower costs, and increased profits. Part of business acumen is knowing how your business works and understanding your business model. It’s also knowing how your client’s business works and their business model.

Business acumen is the new sales acumen. You create value by understanding how to help your clients with their business.

Your Situational Knowledge

Your experiences are also valuable to your clients. You have some scars, as my friend Dave Brock would say. You’ve seen what works. You’ve also seen what has failed. Your experiences allow you to create value for your clients by helping them find the path to better results, seeing around corners, avoiding common pitfalls, and taking advantage of opportunities.

Your situational knowledge creates value for your clients by helping them make decisions based on experience.

Your Ideas

Nothing makes you more valuable than ideas. Resourcefulness is perhaps the greatest human attribute. Your ability to generate new ideas that help move your client’s business forward is valuable–and it can easily differentiate you in a crowded marketplace.

Your ideas allow you to be the value.

Your Ability to Collaborate

You have business acumen, situational knowledge, and ideas. But so does your client. They want to collaborate with you on a solution to produce better results. You know what you know, but you don’t know everything your client knows. Your ability to collaborate with them on a solution creates value, and it almost also creates more value than dictating a solution that hasn’t taken into account all the things that makes your client unique.

Your ability to collaborate makes you a good partner and an effective team member. It creates value for you clients by helping them get the solution they need.

Your Ability to Build Consensus

There is no power sponsor. There are sponsors. More and more, business are making decisions by consensus. The status quo is well-entrenched in their organizations, and it’s sometimes as difficult for your contacts to sell within their own organization as it is for you to sell in yours.

Your ability to help your clients build consensus in their organization makes you a value creator. It’s helping them do something they struggle to do on their own: build the case for change.

Your Ability to Execute

You create value for your clients by owning the outcome that you sold them. They aren’t paying for the idea alone. They’re paying for the execution of that idea. They’re paying for results.

You create value when you orchestrate the effort of your team, owning the outcomes, delegating the transactions, and producing the results they need. Execution is value creation.