What is your Real Value to your Clients (why do your profile clients buy)?

Companies spend a lot of money, time, and mental energy promoting their products and/or services and not as much time as they should understanding if the messaging and model that they are promoting is actually what their clients are buying.

This might sound a bit ridiculous – after all, if your clients are buying your solution they must be tuned-in to what you're selling them, right?  Actually, and I've seen this a number of times, your clients might very well be buying a value that is very different than the one that you think you are providing.

Even if the internally-perceived value is initially in-sync with the value that your best customers are actually buying, this alignment can drift over time.  This is particularly true with privately-held organizations as owners often identify not only with their company, but with the value that they would like their company to provide.  It can make an honest assessment of value difficult to find internally, but it is critical to maximizing the success of your organization.

As a quick example, I once worked with a company that thought that they were providing a 'one-stop shop for retail technology at a low cost'.  They built their marketing messaging around this model for years.  They partnered with vendors based on this model.  And it worked reasonably well – they closed large accounts and they grew.

When they finally got around to asking clients, directly, why they worked with them they got a slightly different answer – apparently the 'one-stop shop' thing was really only a 'some-stop shop' and was nice, but the reason that clients were choosing this organization had far more to do with client service, independence, and the perception of real technology expertise than a cheap price and the ability to source multiple technologies through one partner.

The sales team for the solution provider routinely beat out the manufacturer's reps with their own product (at the same price), which seemed counter-intuitive and management had come to the conclusion that providing a one-stop partner was the reason.  Once they realized that it wasn't the value that the clients were buying they were able to adjust their business model slightly and that slight adjustment had a major impact on both profitability and growth.

New technology became a center-piece of the growth strategy and the solution provider was viewed as an organization that could take new technology (and the right new technology) and make it work, leading the client to success.  The manufacturers weren't trusted – they were viewed as pushing whatever their company provided, regardless of its applicability to the clients’ business problems, and not having enough expertise to make things work as they should.

This allowed the solution provider to rely far less on 'commodity technologies' and positioned them to sell new solutions that hadn't yet been commoditized and therefore carried a much higher margin and a much more defendable relationship with their clients.  It also changed the relationship with the manufacturers – this organization became the go-to partner for new technologies which helped keep the direct reps from competing in the account.

 

How to Identify Your Real Value to Your Best Clients

Now that I've hopefully got you convinced to at least investigate the possibility of some misalignment, how does a company go about identifying if there is a disconnect between perceived and real value?

The general idea is that you are going to have to go through an interview process with your profile clients (if you haven’t taken the time to identify your profile clients please do so – it can have a major impact).  This process can be automated, which can provide for a wanted separation - you don’t want to lead your clients to the answer you want them to give and many of us that are passionate about our business may do this unconsciously.  However, I would recommend that you introduce this process (for both new and existing customers) via a phone call or in-person meeting.  You’ll want to thank them for the help and emphasize that it should result in an even better value and relationship.

Most profile clients (if you've been honest with your assessment of who your profile clients are) will welcome the chance to participate in the improvement of your organization.  They probably already like you and most people like to provide help to someone they like, but they will also want to help you provide better service and value to their organization.  It's a win-win for both parties.

Here is a list of some questions that you’ll want to run through with the client.  There may be other questions that you want to ask as well – the goal of the exercise is to honestly listen and to put your pride and perceptions to the side for awhile.  Ask questions that don't lead the client and try not to color the discussion:

  1. What do you see is our real value to your company?
  2. What do you see is our real value to you as an individual?
  3. Where would you place us in relation to our competitors on a value / cost scale?
  4. How could we improve or fine-tune our value to your organization?
  5. How would you rate us on (scale is 1-5, 5 being excellent):
    1. Setting your team’s expectations                                                             1 2 3 4 5
    2. Communication                                                                                               1 2 3 4 5
    3. Reacting to issues or changing needs                                                     1 2 3 4 5
    4. Our understanding of our value to you                                                 1 2 3 4 5
    5. How well is our value reflected in material or on our website     1 2 3 4 5

This is a short list of questions and you might feel the need to add or change questions, although I wouldn’t suggest making this overly complex or lengthy.  Also please remember – you are looking for the truth with this exercise, not what you want to hear….

You'll also want to incorporate some of this into your overall client feedback program – keeping up to speed with your value to your clients is going to be critical.  Put questions into your feedback form that can help you stay in alignment.

Also – keep in mind that this process can also help you avoid problem clients as well.  Often problem clients are clients that are buying something very different than what you're value is.  If you can help your sales and marketing team better craft your message you should increase your success with profile clients, but also decrease your exposure to future problem customers.

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Alex Crittenden

 

About 

I'm an Enterprise Account Executive with roughly 2 decades of experience working with growing organizations. My focus and experience is on driving sales, building strategic messaging and market positioning, and helping companies to grow. This is a personal blog and does not represent the opinions or feelings of any company that I currently work for or with.

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