A recent article in Reliable Plant on how survival depends on delivering value and not just cutting costs pointed out that, to survive, you have to focus on your value proposition because, these days, customers don’t just want costly products, they want valuable services such as warranty, care, and customization.
It also pointed out that if you wanted to sell value, you had to
- define “value” in terms everyone on your executive team understands and
- define “value” in terms your customers can understand.
This is too true. Not only will your customers not buy what they don’t understand, but management probably won’t support you in your efforts to create it if they don’t understand what it is.
More importantly, it points out that value is a two-way street. For something to be truly valuable, it has to create profit for you and your customer. It’s not value if you lose money making your customer happy. And it’s not value if it doesn’t keep your customer happy, because they’ll just go elsewhere if they can find something that does. Value is that which benefits everyone. So remember to take the holistic view next time you are updating your value proposition.