We had a follow-up meeting with our client, Jenny this week, which was a big test of my faith in the entire capstone process. After our conversation, I started downward spiraling, doubting that we were going in the right direction (well, I shouldn't say 'right' direction, more like doubting that we were going in the direction that would make our client happy). The curse of actually really liking your client, is that you want to please your client, which means it's all too easy to make decisions based on what they want to hear; not what's best for their business. For a quick minute (until my team stepped up and assuaged my fears and screwed my head on straight) I wasn't feeling 100% confident in the dynamic variable choice. It seemed like Jenny wanted us to focus more on the "connections" piece that she sees as the tallest leg of her organization's "three-legged" stool (the other two are cost-savings programs and training). We did not have "connections" explicitly stated in our value proposition (in the way that I thought Jenny would like to see it, anyway). BUT what we DO have is the evidence to back up choosing content over connections for our DV (it's the most important factor to clients), but the fact that it seemed like Jenny wanted the project to focus on "community/connections", rather than the leadership training content was still nagging at me...
I asked my teammates what they thought about about changing the dynamic variable so it focused on networking opportunities available during training sessions, rather than that the content is provided by Cincy corporate execs. I do think either could turn into a strong value proposition, but there are clear disadvantages in changing it up now, especially without the backing of our established variables.
Bottom line: With our groundwork so explicitly laid out and all our RTBs, it's just a matter of explaining that in our proposed strategy, a direct marketing campaign to potential clients, Jenny would be able to outline the entire benefits package, including cost savings programs and networking opportunities, during an onboarding event, but for the purposes of getting their butts in the seats and signing on the dotted line, we're going to have to drive home the value using our established core competency in leadership training, our DV (it's provided by local corporate execs) and our MV (it's cost).
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