How to Effectively Communicate Value When Building a Business

Ever talk to a business owner or an entrepreneur about their business and they were not able to effectively explain what their business did?  Maybe they went on and on trying to describe it and the explanation was simply not very clear. Or the explanation was clear, but there was not a real punch in terms of making a strong impression. When this is the case, these business owners could benefit by improving their ability to effectively communicate the value that they deliver to their customers.

What is value?

Value in this context refers to a business benefit that is transferred to the customers or clients that purchase the products or services. Not to be confused with features and benefits of products that are sold, this is actual improvement that results on the customer’s side at the business level.

For example, take a company that sells web-based training software. The features of this software are that it is completely delivered as software-as-a-service with robust recording and delivery options. A main benefit of this software is the ability to deliver education to anyone that has an internet connection. But the value that this business provides is that it helps its clients to effectively and efficiently train their employees leading to a better workforce.

Why is communicating value important?

Effectively communicating value is important because when we talk with prospects, investors, potential business partners, etc., we need to not only communicate what we do concisely, in a brief period of time, but we also need our message to be as powerful as possible. And while you might understand your product’s features and benefits and they may excite you, the main thing your potential customers care about is how you can help their businesses to decrease cost and increase revenue. Effectively communicating value will provide this information.

Identifying the Core Value

Some business owners may know the value they offer right off the bat. Others may find themselves stuck somewhere between summarizing features and benefits. When this is the case, below is a process that can be used to try to identify the core value that the business offers.

1. Outline features: Summarize or outline the key features of the products or services that are offered.

2. Outline benefits: Take the features that are outlined and build a list of the benefits that those features produce.

3. Summarize benefits: Summarize the benefits provided into a concise summary of the improvements gained.

4. Convert to a business standpoint: Convert over the summarized benefit to what it means from a business standpoint.

Producing a Value Statement

Once the core value is identified, we can produce a value statement. A value statement is a one to two sentence summary of the value that you provide. By having a value statement, we can then have that have that ready to be delivered whenever we meet with potential clients or business partners. Whether  we someone in person, make a cold call, or start to build any of our marketing deliverables, when we begin to explain what we do, we can go directly to the value statement and hopefully if built correctly, it will clearly explain what we do in a powerful way.