Your service to your customers is job number one. You may have every other area of your business perfected, but if this is wrong, the business will fail.
What does value mean to your business? What does value mean to your customers and clients? This is an important concept to understand because “value” is what makes a person want to trade their money for your services or products. If you know what is most important to your customers, you can continue to offer or provide it, and not waste time on things that may not be important or valuable at all. How can we create and increase business value? Let’s break it down into 3 steps.
Step 1- Establish New Value
Define the benefits of the products or services you provide. Your customers want to know “Is this worth spending money on?” and “What’s in it for me?” before opening up their checkbook. Make sure that they clearly understand how your business can make their lives easier or solve a problem they have. The more often this problem is encountered, the better for you! Functional value can give your business a competitive edge. Once your value is established, there will be no need to push your business on anyone. You are simply focusing on your customer base and providing solutions for them.
Example: I have a lot of friends who travel outside of the US, myself included, and we still want to access our US-based accounts like Pandora, Amazon Prime and Netflix. (Note: You can access both Amazon Prime and Netflix in other countries, but the benefits are not the same as what you pay for, and you don’t have the same options.) HMA (www.hidemyass.com) blocks the IP addresses of computers, phones, and tablets, so that we can access our accounts as if we were still in the US. This is a niche business, but creates enormous value for everyone I know who travels a lot. If you pay for a year in advance, you get a pretty steep discount, too.
Step 2- Improve Current Value
Once you have established value, you can start to get creative. In this stage, you can build upon your current value by doing one of three things: either keep the price the same and deliver more with every purchase; lower the price and deliver the same quality of product; or you can offer both. Add depth to a product line with strong core product sales and you will improve your company’s chances to achieve success and lasting value. If you currently offer one product, offer 2 or 3 more to compliment the base product. By creating a list of options, you are assuring your customers that you are striving for quality and longevity in the business world.
Example: When Apple releases a new iPhone or device, they offer the new product at a lower price than the previous model. They create a new product that delivers more, but lower the price of their previous model, which still a valuable, high-quality item.
Step 3- Maximize Embedded Value
Embedded value doesn’t just mean the value of future profits for insurance companies. What I mean here is to see through a product to its core. Pay attention to products you use and think about how they serve you or solve your problems. A good way to articulate a product’s embedded value is to demonstrate what life would be without your product or service (insert infomercial here!). This is like a product’s life calling, it’s true purpose. What can a product or service do that nothing else can do better, and why? What is the one thing it does best? And what are the other things that are just as fabulous that make it more than worth money into? Learn to articulate the essence of what and how something serves you, and it’s best to do this in story form. This will help you develop your business in a way that maximizes its impact on customers by connecting with them.
Example: I use TICO* Shave Oil (disclaimer: Glide Design also worked on the website and development of this product). The key benefit is that it makes shaving less of a pain. It is a USDA organic 4-in-1 shave oil that acts as a pre-shave, shave oil, after-shave, and moisturizer. This is the essence of the product. But its embedded value is a hundred-fold. The bottle is travel-friendly (even for carry-on luggage), shatter resistant, and recyclable. It is used to heal skin irritations on areas of your body that don’t even need shaving. It smells fantastic. And its primary ingredient is hemp seed oil- a super food. Its embedded value is far more than its marketed “shave oil” label.
In the end, value is being of service. Value is serving. Value is problem solving. When you build products or a line of services based on serving your customers, you can’t help but create value.