Becoming Indispensable to Your Customers

In order to grow, you need customers – but not just any customers. You need customers that will value what you sell. Unfortunately, if you’re like most sales people, you have no idea of the value that you sell. Why is this?

Value is defined and created by your customers. Therefore, your approach to value creation must begin with, and be in partnership with, and end with the customer. Follow these three steps for a sound approach to selling value:

Start with the customer

Rather than start with your product, start with the customer’s strategy and processes. In order to create value, you must understand where the customer is going, how they are trying to get there, and what is getting in their way.

Collaborate with the customer

Work out how your capabilities (product or services) can be applied to their processes in order to address external pressures, internal obstacles and/or emerging opportunities for growth.

Work with your customer

Over the long term, ensure that your customers are actually deriving value from the use of your products and services. As much as possible, aim to quantify this value to be sure that both you and your customer understand the economic impact of your intervention.

source:entrepreneur