Want your new product or business idea supported internally? Build a Unique Value Proposition.

Do's and Don'ts for internal Unique Value Propositions to increase your success.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing two amazing entrepreneurs creating an internal startup that came out of a corporate innovation challenge (watch out for the podcast coming soon, it was great). As you do in interviews, sometimes the questions lead you to unexpected discussions. This time we got into the topic of building value propositions to gain permission to build your internal innovation idea or even onboard new technology. 

As the need to innovate becomes increasingly important to stay ahead of the fast-changing consumer desires and pace of change even within B2B organisations, businesses have to challenge themselves internally to come up with the next thing. To address this challenge, organisations are looking to innovation programmes, training and even idea competitions to help shake up what's going on.

Many businesses and leadership teams find that there isn't a lack of ideas when running these activities, but the real challenge comes with trying to filter to find the ones worth taking a chance on. And for those excited about their idea, the challenge is to make sure that the limited funds or bandwidth for "new" is allocated to you.

Step up: unique value proposition. 

Want to get permission to trial or build that new technology? What management to allow you to take on a new product line? Want your idea to land at the top of the competition list? Well, it's time to get to grips with your unique value proposition.

Spending time discussing or showcasing how cool that new piece of kit is, or what it does or even the features of the new product line you've envisioned is not, and more importantly, should not be the criteria by which you sell in your innovation idea in or how the business accepts it. 

Remember, it's about the audience, not you.

Create a Value Proposition for your internal stakeholders.

You're going to have to do the work to understand the value propositions for your idea or product that ignites the emotional connection for more than just the end-user. In fact, if you're working in internal innovation, you need to think about what your value proposition is back to the business.

For example, you might work at a sticker company and have a fabulous new solution for packaging stickers; you know it solves an articulated problem that customers have been flagging. You can now clearly explain why a customer can and will care. But now, you need buy-in and possibly investment from your management team to move this forward. 

It's time to work on your value proposition back to the business. Remembering that the chances are, especially if you've come through an innovation programme that you might be one of many great sticker ideas so here are a few things to consider:

• Don't rely on white-noise statements. For example, using the case it's going to make more revenue will most likely end in an "And? So What? or So does that one, faster?" moment. Of course, it's supposed to do that, so that's a baseline expectation.

• Don't rely on superlatives. Just because it's amazing, cool, even the first, isn't going to cut it. We all need to connect emotionally with the idea but have a clearly defined rationale to make that emotional connection stick. Remember, we buy emotionally and justify with logic. Forget the reason and the connection falls apart.

• Do find the alignment to what your manager or business cares about and align to an articulated problem or challenge your company has. For example, if this new sticker packaging is going to save significant time for your employees, freeing them up to help or build better relationships with their customers and customer success or customer NPS scores are a critical measure highlighted as a must fix by the management team, then this could be a winner. Look at core business KPIs and strategy documents. Even annual reports will give you an idea of what really matters to management. You need to make sure your internal startup aligns with the direction, values and purpose of the business, or you'll be swimming upstream, even if it seems like a no-brainer to you.

(It's a big red flag to you if you can't find an articulated business challenge or problem or even vision to align your idea, solution or product to. It might be marvellous, but it might not be suitable for this company.)

• Do connect the dots. Work through all of the 'why's' and 'so what's' that you can think of—both from management's perspective and the customers or even partners. Being able to demonstrate that you've considered the unique value proposition from all audiences and that you're clear on who your audience is will ensure a much higher success that your idea is the right idea to place the bet.

Ultimately, you will have much more success selling your idea into the business if you approach it using a unique and well-articulated value proposition. And in the long term, the more work you do on the value proposition, the more likely your product will be a success.

And if you're supporting an innovation programme or looking for new ideas, make sure that you give as much support to developing Unique Value Propositions as you can and as early in the process as you can, i.e. weeks, not months. Use these as part of the criteria by which to filter through all the ideas quickly. The faster and more effectively you can make these decisions, the healthier your business innovation advancement. 

Get in touch to discuss how I can help your teams build their value propositions.

Originally posted here