What’s Your Sweet Spot?

We all bring a unique mix of skills, experiences, and competencies to prospective employers and clients. Each one of them individually may be attractive or marginally differentiated, but competing against a large set of “me-too” offers out there.

Let’s say we have successfully translated a generic commodity skill – such as PHP programming – into a compelling value proposition:

“I write PHP code” >> “I create online shopping experiences that are profitable and easy to extend and maintain. Visitors love my work, site owners can sleep at night.”

While the revised value proposition is much more compelling than the objective “feature/function”-level skill description, there are many potential competitors out there who could simply copy your value prop and hook and dilute your personal brand equity.

Exponential differentiation
No worries, I am not trying to give you calculus flashbacks. Exponential differentiation in personal branding uses overlapping value propositions (all neatly translated into customer- or client-facing language) to create strong, almost unassailable differentiation.

Let’s say you have boiled down your unique skills to four buckets. I’ll list the skill / feature with their corresponding benefits below:

• Technology skills >> Promise of contributing rapid and ongoing innovation >> Competitive advantage
• Teamworking skills >> Productivity multiplier for increased team output >> No drama, more output
• Degree from an elite institution >> Inferred prestige and credibility in customer interactions >> Smart by association
• Analytical skills >> Solid decision making based on realistic view of raw data >> Peace of mind

By combining all four benefit “clusters,” you are now competing with a much, much smaller pool of potential substitutes as your competitive sweet spot shrinks with each additional (provable and credible) value proposition. Image the power of having 7, 8, or 10 solid value propositions! You’d practically be creating a brand new category of employee or service provider. You’d be like the iPhone ca. June of 2007: brand new and MUST HAVE – price or long wait outside the Apple store be damned.

To schedule your free personal branding consultation, check the Personal Branding Services page.

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