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What is your unique value?
Over the past ten years of working with business to business sales and professional services organizations, I have concluded that all of them discount their own unique value. They don't really understand it, and don't effectively communicate it.
Question: What is it about you and your organization that is unique and makes you truly different from the competition?
A lot of companies use buzzwords they think people want to hear, they include terms like:
- We provide good customer service. (Who doesn't?)
- We are customer focused (I hope so)
- We have world class people (They travel a lot?)
- We offer competitive pricing (You better)
- We are cutting edge (I hope so)
- We provide high quality products and/or services (I prefer bad products and/or services myself)
- We are passionate about what we do (I prefer working with people that don't care)
- We exceed expectations of our customers (I have heard that before)
- Our Customers are King (I feel so good now)
- We are the market leader (What does that mean?)
- We provide out of the box solutions (How does that help my business?)
- We are unique (HOW?)
Over the past ten years of working with business to business sales and professional services organizations, I have concluded that all of them discount their own unique value. They don't really understand it, and don't effectively communicate it. This leads to getting commoditized, beat down on price, losing control of the sales process and wasting time with "C" clients and prospects.
"Your company value is led first by the value you have in yourself and your unique gifts and talents."
Think about what you do best, what comes most naturally to you and your team. What do clients tell you about why they buy from you and what they most appreciate about you? Have you asked? Why not? Ask a few of your best clients what they think your unique value is and why they keep coming back. The clearer you are about what makes you unique (as a person and an organization), the more you will be compensated accordingly. Are you ready for that?
"The better we understand and connect the things that are most effortless for us and meaningful to others, the more sustainable our growth."
Does the language you use to describe yourself truly reflect the value you provide your clients? Or, are you using the buzzwords like your competitors?
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ok, so my value statement is loaded w/ buzzwords, what are we supposed to do?
find out what is unique to you and use 'real' words to communicate. we have a couple of tools in the Perficency Library that may help - best place to start would be with the Self Assessment.
thoughts on ways to add unique value...
1. I provide some latest information which are very difficult to find.
2. I have one client in one industry.
3. I use common sense.
4. I use simple sentence and simple questions to get information/evidence
5. I charge a higher fee, for all above, as these costs me time and money.
it's how you make people feel...
It's how you make people feel about you. Period.
some thoughts to add...
Ray
Rather than answer your interesting question directly, I would like to add to it.
Firstly, all companies, by definition, are unique. It is their people, culture, experience, infrastructure, processes, methods, etc that make them unique and therefore different from the competition. However, is it uniqueness that the customer is after, or would they prefer to understand why they should so business with you? After all, it could be your poor customer service record that makes you unique!
Rather than look for the seemingly holly grail of selling - uniqueness – answer the more straightforward question… “Why should the customer do business with you?”
When you begin to answer that question with a list of statements you will then need to apply the customer test by asking… “So what?” Why should the customer be impressed? If your statement can be followed by a ‘so what’ then your value is not clear. Answer the ‘so what’ and test again. Keep going until you unearth the real value.
Value should also not be thought of as a ‘one size fits all. What one customer holds as value is not necessarily the same as another. Therefore, once you have your real value statements, you will then need to apply them to your individual customer to see if it is something they value. If it is not, then it is of no value for this customer, for this deal.
It is now down to the skill of the sales professional to be able to articulate the value they and their organisation can deliver to the customer… and if they are not clear about their value, then why should the customer be clear!
benefits sell...
When it comes right down to it, selling is about the relationship and building your conversation with the customer to find out what they need, where they fall short, what's their biggest challenge in the process they are using now etc. It might take a while to build and learn when to ask for the sale. Rather than state all the features of your product/service, you should be selling the Benefits. State the benefits to the client, and not the feature of how you do it. Benefits sell.
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Favorite Buzzword companies
This firm updated their site, it was funnier about 6 months ago. We laughed are heads off reading their copy.
Here was another favorite one:
Advanced Management Systems (AMS) is the "premier" provider of wine industry information systems. We support and sell the industry’s "most" comprehensive suite of software supporting a winery from planting a vineyard, taking the "customer’s check to the bank", reporting back to investors and everything in between.
The stability of AMS solutions is "legendary." They are supported by a "dedicated group of well qualified people."
It is fun to read for the pure entertainment factor.