Sales Laundry

Have you identified all the areas where you create value for your customer?  Do you communicate all of the value you create? 

 Over the last few weeks I have been working with a sales professional struggling to figure out where he could create value for his customers.  His focus on creating value began and ended with his products and the problems his products solved for his customers. 

 I asked him to broaden his definition of “creating value” and with that we began to uncover some new exciting ways he could create some value for his customers.  As a bonus I got a few new ideas of my own.  Here is an absolutely incomplete list of ideas that might help you find some new ways to create some value during your own sales process. 

 NOTE: as a newly minted sales professional many years ago, I thought I determined where and when value was created for a customer and it took more than a few sales calls to slap that silly idea out of my head.  The customer is the ultimate judge on whether or not value has been created. 

Needs Identification Stage

 Help the customer identify what the problems are.  Some customers will have a clear understanding of the problems at hand, others may see a symptom or two, a few will have no idea there is a problem, let alone what to do about it.  In many instances you can create value by just knowing where to look. 

 Automaker Henry Ford asked electrical genius Charlie Steinmetz to build generators for his factory.  One day the generators ground to a halt, and the repairmen could not find the problem.  In desperation, Ford called Steinmetz, who tinkered with the machines for a few hours and then threw the switch.  Sure enough, the generators whirred to life and Steinmetz forwarded a bill to Ford a bill for $10,000.  Flabbergasted, the tightfisted carmaker inquired why the bill was so high. 

 Steinmetz sent Ford a new invoice. $10 – for tinkering with the generators.  $9,990 for knowing where to tinker.  Ford paid the bill.¹

Help establish a virtual meeting of influencers and decision makers to see a problem in 360 degrees and discover latent issues.  Very few organizations have a mechanism to allow multiple people across diverse but related parts of the company to take the time to sit around one table, identify and solve problems.  You can provide that mechanism by visiting with each member separately and sharing the results. 

Evaluation Stage

 Filtering information to find the right solution.  There are more products and more ways to go about solving a problem today than ever before.  Value can be created for a customer looking for an expert to help them map their needs to the right solution for them.  The less a customer knows the higher that value creation can become.

 Help fill gaps in your customer’s knowledge about the latest technology or solutions available.  For customers that make purchasing decisions every few years, expert knowledge amassed in 2005 may not serve them well when making a decision today.  Helping a customer catch up on current technology and/or helping them maintain their role of internal “expert” can create value.

 Build a solution based on the years of experience.  An honest expert opinion from someone specializing in solving just the sort of challenges a business is facing creates value.  

Purchase Stage  

 Make the process easy, convenient and as painless as possible.  For reoccurring transactional purchases driven by price in particular, a simplified purchasing process vs. your competitor can make a significant difference in which company gets the business.

 Helping customers get solutions they need but do not have the desire to fight for.  One of my customers needed to rebuild his company’s technology infrastructure, but he could not bring himself to wage the internal political battle necessary to accomplish this task.  I tried to create value by teaming up with him to help him achieve his objective.  He steered us through the necessary internal meetings I shot down the obstacles that got in our way.  I created value in this instance just by being willing to help and provide support where needed along the way.

 Establishing relationships in purchasing can help you help your client get projects pushed through or speed the approval process.  Having a good relationship with a customers purchasing department can be very beneficial.  In one odd circumstance I found myself creating value just by being the liaison between my customer and their internal purchasing department because there was such animosity between the two groups.

 Creative term structuring.  Having a customer that is ready to buy but short on the necessary budget can be an opportunity to create some significant value.  Creative terms worked out between vendors, distributors, manufacturers, and leasing companies have won some massive projects for me that otherwise would have been lost. 

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“Creating Value” for a customer or prospect does not have to come from your product or service alone.  Value can come from anywhere and it is up to you to find it.  Anything from a strong familiar company name to the way a delivery person acts when facing end clients can create value for the customer.    

 This has by no means been an exhaustive list and I would like to get your input so we can add more ideas to make this a stronger tool.  Where do you “create value” for your customers?  Send me your ideas and I will add them to the list.