Other Ways to Use Your Financial Value Statements

You ‚ ve examined financial value statements from the perspective of using them in conversations. Don ‚ t overlook how powerful this format can be when included in presentations, memos, letters , executive summaries, and full reports . Putting your financial value statements into a variety of formats reinforces your message and helps your audience recognize your value that much quicker.

Documenting your financial value statements, financial value chains, and scorecards can have other benefits. One of the hardest things to do is to go back and re-create the data to support a great story. It ‚ s not always easy to decide how to tell that story. Applying the discipline to track this kind of data can make it easier to apply for grants, awards, or certifications in the future. Social proof is another powerful way to earn credibility. For external consultants and for professionals internal to an organization who are so inclined, applying this type of discipline makes it much easier to support articles, case studies, or professional presentations.

Many readers will have recognized that the format for financial value statements is very similar to the format that many career counselors advise their clients to use when communicating their value in resumes, cover letters, networking conversations, and interviews. Financial value statements can also make it easier for others to write powerful letters of recommendation for you. As you create and update your value statements, don ‚ t forget to update one of the most important places that you can use to communicate your value ‚ your r ƒ sum ƒ .

Finally, if you are external to an organization, your financial value statements can go a long way to helping you with sales. Working on sales is not only important when you are trying to sell a customer for the first time. It is also important to keep selling your value as you meet with more people up and down the organization ‚ s financial value chain and as you deliver the service you have contracted for.

If you are having trouble getting in the front door, you might check out Anthony Parinello ‚ s book Selling to VITO: The Very Important Top Officer , which is listed in the Additional Resources section. Parinello focuses on the top officers of an organization, for sales across all industries. His techniques are not applicable to all audiences that a WLP professional must deal with every day, nor does it describe how to evaluate or make connections from a specific performance intervention to a financial number. Parinello does, however, offer some excellent tips and techniques for using statements somewhat similar to the financial value statements in this book to get meetings with high-level executives.