Directing Value Proposition Development

Course Overview

Value propositions are about delivering customer benefits. They are about satisfying customers' needs in ways that are unique compared to competing propositions. We work out what the value proposition should be by listening carefully to our customers. Through creative communications a successful value proposition is positioned in the minds of prospects in such a way as to create the perception of distinctiveness and superiority. Right?

But what about the value propositions inherent disbenefits? What if the proposition is broadly undifferentiated compared to competing alternatives? What if the cost of value-adding features that customers tell us they want outweighs what customers are prepared to pay for them? What happens when the communications campaign is not backed up by the delivery of real distinctiveness and superiority? What if the proposition has no USP?

The 'challenge' approach of this course is designed to free you from the patterns of thinking that have dominated professional marketing disciplines for many years.

Audience

This course is designed for senior marketing professionals responsible for leading their organisations' (or a part of it) approach to defining and developing offerings to a market, segment or customer. Their organisation will place an expectation on them to develop robust plans to drive growth or competitive advantage and they will be familiar with business case development.

Skills Gained

The core benefit to your organisation is one of relevance and impact. The course is designed not to provide generic 'solutions' to complex, company-specific challenges - more to provide a non-competitive environment where delegates can question accepted thinking on their own value propositions and benefit from sharing different practices outside of their own industry. The course has been structured in a series of short modules over 1.5 days with facilitated open discussion preferred to formal classroom-style presentation (although some materials will be available in presentation format both to provide challenges to conventional thinking and to aid discussion).

This is NOT a course of 'answers' and does not purport to offer you simplistic solutions that look great on paper but prove to be much more complex and unfeasible in practice. Instead, this course is designed to create an opportunity for you to think differently about your value propositions, and to talk about your problems and potential solutions with fellow delegates.

To avoid competitive concerns, applications for this course are taken on a first come-first served basis and direct competitors of confirmed attendees will be asked to defer to the next available date.

Course Outline

• Challenge your organisation's approach to developing value propositions
• Question your organisation's definition and understanding of value and value creation
• Understand and articulate how customers make value trade-offs
• Understand the relationship between value propositions and branding/positioning
• Apply the principles of innovation to developing value propositions
• Support and improve service-based or service-extended value propositions