Communicating value is the key to business success.
Any company that struggles to communicate value effectively is likely to fail. Any salesperson that can’t communicate value effectively is likely to starve. Garage is no different; if you fail to communicate your Garage’s value, it will likely fail to grow.
Your client is working with IBM in a Garage model because someone, somewhere effectively communicated the value that this approach could provide. Now it is your job to follow-through by effectively communicating the value of the Garage engagement. If you have done your job right, you will have started the entire engagement around value conversations, co-created the value hypotheses for your Garage alongside your client, and built value trees for each Garage opportunity you’ve pursued.
Communicating value is a skill
It is hard and getting good at it comes from dedication and practice. There is even an IBM badge specifically dedicated to it
Like identifying value, there is no single, magic formula for communicating value.
Every IBM client is different, and no single technique will work across all of them. The intent of this chapter is to give you some fundamental structures, some things to think about, and some resources to make it a little easier for you.
To effectively communicate value, let’s start by looking at one of the fundamental tenets of marketing.
In marketing, there are basically three levels of value translation; features, benefits, and needs. Successful marketers recognize that all three are important to communicate, and all three need to be related to each other. Features have to be
First Example:
A cellphone might have an 800:1 contrast ratio (feature) which means you can see it more easily in daylight (benefit) which means greater freedom to pursue an active lifestyle (need).
This is what is known as value translation.
Each of these product attributes are important, but the difference lies in how they are woven together into a story and communicated. In a Garage, you can leverage this thinking the same way to effectively communicate.
Second Example:
“We’ve connected all 48 of your supply chain vendors into a single Blockchain (feature) which means you will have real-time updates and insights into your entire supply chain (benefit) which means not only will you be less vulnerable to massive business disruptions as a result of supply chain disruption, but you will also save $XX a year in new supply chain efficiencies.” (need)
A sentence like that is music to the ears of any executive stakeholder.
Remember that clients don’t buy because of features or benefits; they buy because of the needs that are being met. All three levels of value translation are important, but the real gold lies in communicating how the work you’ve done directly meets their needs.
Under-promise
and over-deliver
It’s a commonly held cliche, but in the context of a Garage, where so much is co-created and few solutions are defined at the outset, it’s an important one to consider.
Under-promising and over-delivering is the key to managing and then exceeding expectations. If you set the bar too high, you create blockers to value. Your client’s baseline expectations are pegged at unrealistic levels, and they’re more likely to be disappointed when an outcome fails to fully meet them.
Consider the story you want to be able to tell about your Garage and the opportunities it works on. What is the narrative you want to be able to communicate about your work? Is it one of simply meeting expectations, or one of confidently and consistently surpassing them?