Find Your Unique Value Proposition: Make Them Fight for You

Are you looking to get the next promotion? Or are you trying to get good projects or positions? Or are you seeking the next pay tier associate with your high performance? If you are seeking but not obtaining these aspects, you are most likely not projecting your Unique Value Proposition to your leaders, organization, and peer groups. If managed correctly, you can generate such high demand for your work positions and increases will be offered to you. 

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What Is The Value Proposition Definition?

A value proposition is a promise, or guarantee, that a company makes to its customers. In our case, we are going to discuss what your value proposition is and how to improve your brand. It’s the reason why leaders should choose you over your peers or external candidates for projects, promotions, and obvious compensatory benefits.

Your value proposition is the key to you having a long career and how you will be perceived as you grow your career. The value proposition is related to your modus operandi (which we will discuss in a separate post coming) or the way you operate, execute, and your work culture expectations.

Make sure your resume reflects your value proposition. Read our blog on Mastering ATS-Friendly Resumes: A Guide to Getting Noticed

This proposition is a statement that tells the leader or peers what you can offer that no one else can. This statement needs to be clear and concise and should include: How you will solve customers’ problems. Or how you are exponentially more productive than your peers. Or how you can generate mass activity leading to great increases in revenue. The list goes on and on based on the unique values you can bring as part of your brand.

Basic ways to show your value at work:

1: Be a team player

Help team members and your boss. If you’re really good at something, lend a hand and teach your peers or boss what you know. This helps the team and demonstrates that you’re a good person to have around. Request additional workload if you have the capacity. 

2: Have a positive attitude

People like to work with people who are positive, happy, and always ready to help. Nothing is worse than working with someone who is always complaining or negative. Be sure to keep your attitude positive and your energy high. This is key to our future brand discussion.

3: Have a good work ethic

A good work ethic is as important as a good education. We all know that you can be the smartest person in the world, but if you don’t have a good work ethic, you will not get far. Your work ethic is not just about showing up to work on time and doing your job, it is about being a team player and being a part of the company’s success. You should always be honest and have integrity. It is about being a person of your word.

4: Be dependable

Dependability is a key factor in a successful brand. If you are not dependable, people will not trust you and your brand will suffer. You have to be able to show up when you say you will and DWYSYWD. Not only is this a value proposition but this leads to good work/life balance.

5: Be honest and trustworthy

You can’t build trust with your audience if you don’t practice honesty in all of your interactions.  Be honest in your dealings with your customers and potential customers, and be honest with yourself about where you are in the process.  It is important, to be honest with yourself about what you want out of social media marketing.  If you are not honest with yourself, then you will not be able to measure the success of your efforts.

What Is Your Unique Value Proposition?

Your unique value proposition (UVP) is the reason why your employer and organization should value you above other employees. Side note, don’t let career speed bumps (layoffs, not getting promoted) deter you from thinking you are extremely valuable. It is important to understand what sets you apart from the rest of your peer group or competition so that you can build a brand that showcases your UVP. This UVP should be evident both internally and externally.

Your personal UVP is a single value statement that describes the benefit of your work, performance, product, or service you uniquely provide. It’s the most important part of any career strategy because it helps leaders understand what makes you stand out compared to others. The UVP is the foundation of what you are at the core.

Additionally, you should be able to recite your UVP in an elevator pitch. You need to be able to concisely deliver your personal message in the event you are asked. You should also tactfully broadcast this when possible. Meaning, you should have a (one or two) PowerPoint slides with material reflecting your principles and UVP. If you are further evolved and have your own website, sales presentations, and social media content, your materials will also reflect the UVP.

What is the difference between a unique value proposition and a brand?

The UPV is a self-marketing strategy that gives the leader a reason to value you ahead of others. It is a promise of what value you will deliver to them. Your branding is the process of creating a name, symbol, or design that identifies and differentiates you from other similar peers or candidates. It is the perception of you in the work marketplace.

Projecting Your Value Proposition as Your Brand

Your personal brand is the image you are projecting about yourself to the world. It is what people think of you when they hear your name or see your face. Your personal brand is an extension of your business brand, but it can be different. It can be based on one aspect of you, not the whole. There are many ways to define your personal brand. Here are a few ways that I have seen:  Your personal brand is how people describe you in one word.-  Your personal brand is how you want people to value, perceive, and your reputation.

Your personal brand is important in your career. The brand is how you are perceived by your colleagues, customers, and partners. It’s how you are remembered. Your personal brand is also the sum of what people say about you when you are not in the room.

Something to be aware of is you are also the sum of the people who surround you. This means you need to be aware of who you align and hang out with at work. Sadly enough, politics do play a part in the workplace. This does NOT mean being a suck-up or being friends with people for political reasons. My point is more to question who you are associating with, whether they are accountable, and whether they value what you are trying to accomplish.

Strategic and Tactful Broadcasting

Broadcasting by definition is the distribution of information to a large audience. It is a form of mass communication. Broadcasting began with radio and television, and today encompasses all other forms of transmission such as satellite, podcasting, webcasting, and other forms of digital media.

When it comes to showing, providing insight, and building your brand-based value proposition, this does not mean total mass distribution. I am talking about the surgical strategic precision of broadcasting your UVP via tactful brand broadcasting.

NOTE: This does not include jumping up and down screaming look at me. Nor does it include spamming your successes, posting results on Instagram or other social media, and definitely NOT purposely being ‘that guy/gal’ who boasts. 

Here are some tactful broadcasting tactics: 

‘Situational Awareness Only’ Emails

Proactively update progress updates your direct leader, valued peer leaders, and internal strategic projects, programs, and success you/your team have achieved. If you do not already have a communication platform to update, start with a commitment email. Example: 

“Leaders,

My team and I are working on the listed projects/processes/activities (depending on your work) below. We are committed to achieving the results included in each program (have measures to update). Once a month I commit to sending this update to each of you to keep you all situationally aware of our progress. “

This email series shows them commitment. As you execute this it allows you to show cadence and dependability. Lastly, communicating the progress gives you an opportunity to show your results without showboating. Informative but with the greatest of humility is the key when providing this broadcast. 

Mentor and Mentee Relationships

Seeking mentorship is one of the most undervalued but easiest ways to progress your career and knowledge. A majority of executive leadership is willing to take on mentees. However, many leaders go unasked to be a mentor. My suggestion is to seek a mentor either in up your food chain or from an adjacent organization. The reason for the alignment is to be able to gain insight, again show your progress on initiatives, and further broadcast your UVP right directly to the source. 

Ponder this: During end-of-year reviews, leaders get on calls to review talent, discuss who should stack rank higher, and evaluate who they can not afford to lose. You want and need to be a prime part of the review discussion. If you chose your mentor(s) correctly, you will have advocates in the discussion talking FOR you and your value proposition. 

The other thing I will mention here is the value of gaining knowledge and perspective. It is important to have a mentor in your work and life. Not only to help you learn and grow in your career but also to help you with life’s lessons and challenges. You will be able to see the world from a different perspective and gain valuable insight. 

Using Social Media to Showcase Your Value Proposition

You will need to establish a presence on social media and be consistent with your career strategy. Using the same tone and voice will help further build a brand identity. This will help you build your social sphere and be able to reach your target audience or show greater influence on your leadership.

Social media is a great way to communicate with your target market in real-time. If you are not taking advantage of this opportunity, you are missing out on a great marketing tool.  Social media gives you the ability to build relationships with your customers.  It is important to always be engaging with your audience to keep them interested in your brand.

In marketing, the first step to creating a social media strategy is to create a social persona. A social persona is a character that represents your brand on social media. This character will be the face of your brand and will interact with your audience and share information about your brand. 

Your Social Persona

Whether you are a sales executive or you are an expert in an industry or field, your social footprint needs to reflect your UVP and brand. For a professional social persona, it is best to have this on LinkedIn followed by Twitter, then Instagram, and then maybe Facebook. Think of this as an avatar or projection of your body of work. Having a strategy for how you are going to be viewed on social media is key to increasing your ongoing value internally and externally. 

A social persona is the face of your brand. It is the first impression your audience will see.  Social media is a great way to share your voice and personality as a brand.  Share your values and mission with the world and engage with those who follow you.  Your social persona will be based on how you interact with others and what you share with them.

The social persona you create is an extension of your brand. It should reflect your industry-leading thoughts, articles that project you as a thought leader, and keen insight showing your value proposition. WARNING: If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or insulting, people will not want to be associated with you. If you are constantly positive, supportive, and helpful, people will want to be associated with you. 

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How to Identify Your Unique Value Proposition

Step 1: Review how your performance is against your primary job function-

Before we go any further, you need to make sure you are firing on all cylinders. You can not go out and ask for executive sponsorship or mentors if you are below performance standards. So you are missing the target, focus on that part of your work. 

If you are at or above performance objectives, review in detail what has gotten you to success. Evaluate if it is different or unique compared to your peers. I recommend sitting over a blank sheet of lined paper or a Word document to bullet out your own processes. How you get to high-performance is more about replicating and leveraging what you do extremely well. If you do not know why you should ask others what you uniquely do that others notice. 

Step 2: Do you know what you bring to the business?

Again, this is a self-reflection of your work. Identify where you have received kudos, recognition, or great verbiage in a write-up or review. It is helpful to examine those comments to find what you bring. Is it results, or are you a leader amongst your peers in an area(s), or do you use your own system to generate successful results? 

Step 3: What is unique about what you do?

If any of step 2 is unique to only you, capture it and dissect it like a science project. Write out all of the habits, cadences, activities, shortcuts, bandaids, workaround,  playbooks, and any other secret mojo you use to be successful. More than likely you will find, these tactics can be not only replicated but can be multiplied for any or all aspects of your professional and personal life. 

Step 4: Capture Lightning in a Bottle-

Once you have found what you do to generate success differently or more consistently above your peers, you need to capture it and create it into a program. This does not need to be how to launch it across the entire corporation unless you are in a role or position to do so. Again, start to formulate it into a slide or three on how to apply it in your work and in opportunities you will get to grow in your career. For example: As I have grown as an executive leader, I have brought my unique value proposition slides with me and applied it successfully in organizations I have been asked to lead. Logos might change, and tasks or activities might change however the path to success has continued to be repeated. 

Step 5: How is this unique value proposition communicated?

As outlined in the broadcasting section, you need to have a regimented communication strategy. A great idea or plan is nothing if no one knows about it. Again, humility wins you style points here when communicating upwards or to adjacent groups. Most importantly, if you are crushing it your results will be speaking for themselves. High performance is the best communicator. 

Final Words- 

Do not underestimate your unique value proposition. I can tell you from experience, you will run into situations with bad leaders who will see your proposition as a threat. Some might even try to undermine you. However, I encourage you to continue to be you, be high performing, be humble, and be the best you to endure. The success is worth the work. 

Lastly, I will leave you with these words of advice. The exercises listed above are sound reflections on how you operate. Not only should you spend time continually finding or honing your skills but furthering the value of your habits, process, and performance. We spend a lot of time working but very little time reflecting, sharpening the saw, and improving. Professional athletes, Navy Seals, concert pianists, and other highly skilled professionals practice 99% to perform 1% of the time. It is more than worth spending the time to better yourself. 

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