10 ways to add value to your product or service

1.Providing expert advice and a tremendously high level of professionalism. Lots of consulting organizations, accounting firms and even medical professionals are paid a tidy sum for the level of advice that they provide. However, for you as a sales professional, in order for you to be able to provide value, what you need to do is to understand that you have to provide a level of advice that is significantly higher, more sophisticated and a lot more valuable than that of your competition. What this means is a higher level of sophistication, wisdom and understanding about what it is that you do.

2.Bundling and packaging.  I’m not only talking here about the way your product or service actually looks, I’m also talking about being able to put together desirable packages, purchasing levels and a series of added benefits that are significant in value and are, themselves, a whole lot more valuable than simply the product is by itself.

3.Service levels. It is possible for you to differentiate yourself not only by providing a higher level of service but by adding different levels of service based upon someone’s size, frequency or amount of purchase. For example, you may want to have gold or platinum or silver levels of service that people qualify for, are willing to pay for, and receive when they do business with you.

4.Frequent buyer programs. This is tied into the concept that the more someone buys from you the more valuable service, pricing, benefits and related items they receive. It is somewhat like frequent flyer miles with an airline. I know people who actually fly thousands of miles out of their way to stay on one particular airline only because they want to build up the miles!

5.Transition and education. As new customers come on stream with your organization you may want to provide action or transition teams to help them to be better able to utilize the products or services that you sell them. By the same token, the more education they have related to those products or services the more capable they’ll be at utilizing them.

6.Recognition and reward levels. This is somewhat different from frequent buyer programs in that with this particular concept behind value-added you actually provide recognition to clients or customers based upon their ability to utilize your product or service, maximize its potential, buy certain levels from you, etc. What this means is that they themselves are recognized for being outstanding customers. Several years ago we included a Hall of Fame in our newsletter and we had lots of clients very interested in appearing and becoming a part of our Hall of Fame. It’s a fantastic way to utilize good relationships and good will.

7.Qualitative preference. Based upon someone’s level of purchase, involvement or interaction, you provide higher quality of products, perhaps a more sophisticated level of service, dedicated personnel, dedicated phone lines, fax lines, or the like, that gives them a greater opportunity to be treated better than the run of the mill customer happens to be. You may even be able to use this for introductory customers as a value-added component.

8.Dedicated personnel. This works particularly well if you have a technical product or service or one that requires support. It is not difficult to understand that the more someone is familiar with another person’s account, products, machinery, equipment or way of doing business, it is far easier to do business with that organization. In this scenario, you simply assign dedicated account people to handle your customer’s accounts personally.

9.Speed of service or delivery. One of the ways to differentiate yourself is to guarantee some sort of on time or faster delivery. It is very well known and accepted that on time delivery is a key component for charging full or maximum pricing. It is also a component as it relates to providing value-added services and products.

10.Insider information. This is very common when people are selling information as it relates to stocks, bonds, financial information or anything related to information or time specific data. Utilizing this process you may want to consider a regular newsletter (electronic or printed) that updates customers on a regular basis as it relates to very key and important information that they have to have.

These 10 ways to add value can all be applied to you in your day-to-day sales activity. There is little doubt that it requires creativity, innovation and a willingness to out-work your competition. But the real sad truth is that if you continue to sell the way you always have, price will continue to rule and I guarantee you that you’ll have a competitor that will take one or several of these 10 ideas and put them into place. Your challenge? Do it before they do it! As the famous confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest once said following a battle, “I won because I got there firstest with the mostest!” You need to do the same thing.

7 Ways to add value to your business

1. The Faster The Better

The first way to increase value is simply to increase the speed you deliver the kind of value people are willing to pay for.  

Successful people know everybody is impatient.  A person who didn’t realize that they wanted your product or service until today, now wants it yesterday. People perceive a direct correlation between speed and the value of your offering.  

A person who can do it for you fast is considered to be a better and competent person offering a higher level of quality than a person who does it slowly, or whenever they get around to it.

2. Offer Better Quality

The second key to creating wealth is by offering better quality than your competitors at the same price.  

And remember, quality is whatever the customer says it is.  Total quality management can best be defined as: “Finding out what your customer wants and giving it to him or her faster than your competitors.”

Quality does not just mean greater durability or excellence in design.  Quality refers, first of all, to utility, to the use that the customer needs to put the product or service.  It is the customer’s specific need, or the benefit that the customer seeks, that defines quality in his or her mind.

3. Add Value

The third way that you can become wealthy is by looking for ways to add value to everything you do.  

Remember, if everyone is offering the same thing, these factors of the product or service become the basic minimum, or the expected norm in the market.  

If you want to stand out as a person or as a producer, you have to “plus” whatever you are doing so that your customer perceives you and your offering as being superior to that of your competitors.

You can add value to a product or service by improving the packaging or the design.  You can increase its value by simplifying its method of use.  

Apple transformed the entire world of computers by making them easy to use for the unsophisticated person.

Simplicity became an enormous source of added value for Apple, and for countless other companies that have followed the same route.

4. Increase Convenience

The fourth way of increasing wealth is by increasing the convenience of purchasing and using your product or service.  

Fast food stores by the thousands are a simple example of how much more people are willing to pay for convenience than they are if they have to drive across town to a major shopping center or a major grocery store.

5. Improve Customer Service

A fifth way of creating value and increasing wealth is by improving customer service.  People are predominantly emotional.

They are greatly impacted by the warmth, friendliness, cheerfulness and helpfulness of customer service representatives.  Many companies are using customer service as a primary source of competitive advantage in a fast changing marketplace.

6. Changing Lifestyles

The sixth key to creating wealth is changing life styles, and the impact they are having on customer purchasing patterns and behaviors throughout the country.  

There is a national trend toward cocooning, or staying at home more and to making the home environment more enjoyable.  People’s tastes are very different from the tastes of people a generation ago.  

More people want to travel and take vacations, thereby creating a boom in the travel, leisure, resort and cruise industries.

Changing lifestyles and demographics can create opportunities that will enable you to offer a product or service to a clearly identifiable market that can make you wealthy in a short period of time.

7. Offer Planned Discounts

The seventh key to creating to wealth is just planned discounting.  This involves finding ways to sell higher and higher volumes of products and services to more and more people at lower and lower prices.

You’ve heard it said that, “If you want to dine with the classes, you have to sell to the masses.”

How could you offer a product or service of good value at an even lower price?  How could you squeeze out the costs of getting that product or service to the customer and pass the savings onto him or her?

When you begin thinking of increasing the speed at which you deliver your product or service, improving the quality, add value at every stage of production, increasing the convenience for your customers, giving better customer service, catering to changing lifestyles and trends and finding ways to reduce the actual cost, you will be astonished at the incredible number of ideas and possibilities that exist around you.

And remember, one idea of insight for benefiting customers in a way that no one is currently offering can be the springboard that launches you into a life of financial success and achievement.