You Need to Define Your Value Now!

When you were getting ready to launch your business, hopefully you never had this conversation, ‘live’ or just in your head. “I want to have the cheapest product on the market.” or “I want my services to be the least expensive.” Surely you never intended to be known as offering the least expensive product or service available. Unless you are Walmart, K-Mart or another business based on a business model of deep discounts, think long and hard about your pricing and the value you bring to customers. Clearly, you did not define value, so it’s time to define your value – now.

Yes, there really are businesses operating that way. They don’t spend time during their business planning process working on pricing strategies. They don’t see or clearly define value. They don’t believe they offer any particularly special value. If you don’t see and define value in what you are selling, why would you expect customers to see value in your offerings?

Define Your Value Now, Not Later

Just like price, value is something not enough business owners feel comfortable talking about. One of the hardest things to do is bring up that money topic. Will our bid come in too high? Will it be too low? Are we leaving money on the table? Can we charge as much as our competitors?

Guess what? It’s not all about money. There has to be value provided for any money exchanged between customers and businesses. If there is value, customers will gladly pay for it. How to you approach that touchy subject of value? It’s actually not that difficult. First of all, just ask your customers what value means to them. “What?! Ask my customers?” Wild and crazy concept, isn’t it? Not really.

Define Your Value Based on Customer Input

At some point in your sales process, ask what ‘value’ means to your customer. Viewed another way, ask how will they define success at the end of your business relationship? Again, just ask them. If you have one thought in your mind and the customer sees success and value as something very different, you are clearly not on the same page.

You more than likely have a variety of products or services to offer. If you see some of them as having more valuable than the client does and expend your efforts in that direction, customers are not going to be satisfied. Focus on what the client sees as having value from the start, reiterate it throughout your relationship and again at the end. The result: you will have less difficulty setting and getting higher compensation for the value you provide for them.

What about you? How did you define your value, and how much it is worth? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

6 Comments

Lisa, SystemSavvy Consulting June 27, 2011 at 1:15 pm

Terri
Great post! I love the idea of asking the client what success looks like when the project is finished. To often, as a professional organizer, I have one idea in my head, yet my idea isn’t what matters – it is the client’s. Or, sometimes the client doesn’t have a clear view of what success means or looks like (which is another problem entirely). Your post has prompted me to add this question to my intake form! Thanks for such an insightful post.
- Terri June 27, 2011 at 2:22 pm
  
  Happy to have brought you some value, Lisa. The sooner everyone realizes that it is the client’s perspective of value and success that really matters, the better off the business world will be. A satisfied customer will tell the world what a great job we did, assuming we met their expectations or surpassed them. And, they will tell friends and colleagues. If we don’t meet expectations, you can be sure they will also tell people how incompetent we are. Finding out up front where they are setting the bar can make our jobs so much easier.
  
  Thanks for visiting. Come back soon.
Jayna Locke June 25, 2011 at 10:47 am

I enjoyed reading this post. Value is everything. Without it you are simple “selling” and people do not buy that. They want the value you provide. They want to know how your product or service will solve their problem, enhance something they want to improve, etc.

Providing a clear value proposition can be challenging. The best place to start is to ask enough questions to fully understand the problems your client wants to solve. Then you can tailor your proposal around resolving those issues. When you address your client’s problems in a meaningful way, that client is going to be happy to pay you for the value you provide.
- Terri June 26, 2011 at 1:46 am
  
  Glad you liked the post, Jayna. Too many people fail to think about the value they bring to their customers and end up not being compensated for the value so much as time. Brilliant ideas with a lot of value can be developed in a short period of time. Why only be paid for a couple hours of work if the value to the customer is worth much more.
Nicki June 25, 2011 at 6:53 am

Thank you for visiting my blog. This is a great post, I agree that companies should concentrate more on value than money and I like the idea of asking your customers what vaule means to them directly.
I look forward to future posts.

Nicki
- Terri June 26, 2011 at 1:48 am
  
  So many need to acknowledge that what they bring to the table has value so that they will be compensated accordingly. Thanks for your comment.

Comments are closed.