Podcast Episode #7: How to Master Value for Customer Results

Hi and welcome to the Key Customer Growth Podcast. My name is Jermaine Edwards and I have become obsessed with customer behavior and how people and organizations win with their best customers long term. After starting, failing, and growing my own companies, 30 customer growth projects, hundreds of strategies, and the study of 50 years of customer service research, I've seen firsthand how and why organizations win, lose, and win again with their most important customers. This podcast is my way of sharing those insights, failures, principles, and strategies so you can become what I call an Irreplaceable Advisor, someone so valuable your customers never want to leave. In an increasingly competitive world, how do you continue to deliver unrivaled value and deepen those most important customer relationships? Join me as your customer growth guide, your Your journey starts here. Hey, and welcome to the Key Customer Growth Podcast. My name is Jermaine Edwards, your customer growth guide, and this is episode 7.

Now, every week I say this almost all the time, I get to explore some of the most interesting, difficult, topical, controversial, and undervalued customer topics today, and sometimes undervalued in, in the sense of how we approach and think about these core concepts in business. That we can often take for granted. And when we haven't fully explored or challenged our own perspectives and perceptions, it can lead us to not get the full results that we possibly could do from our activities, both internally and externally with our customers. So in this episode, I want to talk about value. Now, uh, value is one of the first concepts we typically learn in business, and business professionals hear it all the time. Sell value, not features. We're told to always provide value, and this is essential. In business in regards to the work that we do with others and our customers. But if we know all this, why do so many leaders, teams, and organizations struggle with getting this right? And they struggle because customers are actually complaining. So we can get the actual feedback from our customers. Customers say they don't see it. And oftentimes, the reality of the value that we produce shows up in the marketplace where we are not seen as distinct and distinguished enough to be chosen first in the areas where we want to be seen with our customers. So what do we do? Well, in the study of value with my own customers and evaluation of literally hundreds of organizations, there are 3 main reasons this happens, but there are also 4 disciplines that are important for us to consider that enable us to deliver value that really matters to our customers. It's more consistent. So this podcast, we're going to explore really the truth about value. Why leaders and teams don't get the results they want from value they produce, how we can master value for results, and the value disciplines needed to really execute the things that we deliver for our customers. So here's the truth, uh, not all customers are created equal, and I bet you could probably think of some customers that you dread to see and those ones that bring you joy in business. Now, despite these two very differing organizations, the results and relationships we get from our customers are equal to this one trait: our ability to communicate and deliver value consistently that matters to our customers. That's really important— our ability to communicate and deliver value consistently to our customers. So value is extremely important. It's one of the 4 critical success and growth, growth drivers within our organizations. It determines our influence, our reputation, our position, our authority, ultimately the growth in our relationships. So what value means to you and your customers really is important. It, it matters because if you have differing views or different expectations, you're likely not fulfilling those things that are equally valid to your customer, and you're wasting resource and energy in the wrong places. Send So, you know, what our value means to you and your customers can often be different. So if we don't yet have a clear view of the value we want to deliver to our customers, how to provide it, it can then lead us to not get the kind of advantage we want in our market— marketplace. So if we want to really have unrivaled advantage in our marketplace, we have to get value right because it will transform the way our organization is perceived and experienced. Positively by our customers. So why don't we see this? Well, there are 3 reasons that tend to come up most often in conversation. So one is that we don't yet have a clear defined idea for what value means in our organisations. Therefore, we can't really quantify what that is and establish clear measures around it. We sometimes believe that perceived value remains the same for our customers, that actually at the point in which we sell a product or service, the benefits that they need to have or results from the product at different points in our relationship remain the same. And some of that will be true, but other times, largely, it actually shifts and changes over time. And the other area here is we're often unaware of the practices that influence value and how we could best use them. So all of these 3 reasons lead to inconsistent results, sometimes loss of customers and frustrated relationships. So let's just start by defining value first. So here's my attempt at value, and you may have your own, you can look look up the dictionary versions, but for me, this is the best representation of value that I see today in business. It's our ability to provide a relevant, sought-after, personalized outcome that delivers a specific result based on a present, future, practical, and emotional need of our clients or our customers. So it's our ability to provide a relevant, sought-after, personalized outcome that delivers a specific result based on the present and future practical and emotional needs of your customers. Now, that's a mouthful all by itself, but it will come much more clear as we move through in this conversation. But if this is true, if it's really about our ability to provide something that's relevant, that is really sought after, it's personalised, it delivers a very specific result for a present or a future practical or emotional need, then we need to really consider how well we're doing in this area. So how can we deliver this consistently? Well, let's talk about how we might think about mastering value. Now, it begins with us evaluating how we think about value itself within our business, and it's highly dependent on how we think about what I call the value disciplines. So whenever we choose to engage with our customers, we're delivering value there is a process in which we follow, whether it's unseen or it's unseen, or if it's seen, understood, or not understood. We're actually following or going through a process in which we determine or think about how we deliver value. That could be within your value chain of a business, but this is much more specific. So it's about the actual context of how we deliver that for ourselves and the disciplines we need to begin to deliver that consistently. So those 4 disciplines are really specific. So those value disciplines are being strategic, being contextual, personalized, and empathetic. And we're going to go through all of those 4 in just a moment, but the quality of value that we bring is equal to how clear we are about the results that we want and how well we apply these 4 disciplines. So let's walk through these disciplines together, then I'll walk you through where these disciplines come from and some of the value other areas in value. So one of the 4 disciplines is being strategic. So the whole idea of strategic as a discipline is it needs to fit with yours and your client's overall goals, meaning that anything that we choose to produce for our customers needs to fit in with where we're trying to go with the customer and where they are trying to go.

Overall.

So it needs to have that kind of benefit. So when they see it, they immediately say, "Hey, that's exactly what we need to move forward." We often call this the next best step for the customer. So how do we deliver value that offers the best next step? That's all about the strategic view. So when we're thinking about value, we need to ask ourselves, is this strategic? Does it fit with the client's and our overall goal together. The second discipline is it needs to be contextual. So it needs to be relevant to a customer when they receive it. Now oftentimes we can have great ideas but have the wrong timing, or have great ideas and not know how to position it within the timing of where our customer is. An example of this is really simple. So we may have a customer that's going through a merger. Now we may have a goal of helping them to consolidate their, um, costs, helping them with improving efficiencies, all these types of things. But the, the context of them going through a merger impacts, or may impact, the way in which you think about the relationship and how you position what it is that you're trying to deliver. So context, or being contextual, making sure it's fit into the relevance for the customer when they receive it, is really important. So number 1, needs to be strategic, needs to fit. Contextual, it needs to be relevant. That's number 2. Number 3 is it needs to be personalized, meaning if it's being delivered to a particular customer, whether a department or individual, it needs to be easy to take action on and communicate for them. Meaning as we produce it, it needs to be something that, that is, uh, really systematically, uh, logical and allows them some space to begin to compute it and to communicate it easily within their business, particularly if you are trying to get them to make a decision on something or get them to consider a new change or a new way of thinking about something within their organization. We need to provide in a way that is personalized for them, make it easy for them to take action on, make it easy for them to begin making a choice on what's best so they can communicate really easily. This might mean that you actually have what we call a value value stack, which is producing one piece of content with different steps but offering the different steps at a different stage in the relationship. So you may want to build up to it directly. So we'll make sure it's personalized for the department, team, individual people that we're communicating with. That's number 3. Number 4, it needs to be empathetic, meaning it must meet a clear internal and external need, meaning it needs to matter to them at a philosophical and a psychological level. Now, the reason why this is important is oftentimes our decisions are grounded in a range of different needs that we have both internally and externally. And so we often deal with the external view of what a customer needs and not the internal view as well. So an internal view may be a value that supports with a status. Challenge that somebody has. Maybe something's gone wrong in the organization. Maybe they need some support and they're feeling overwhelmed, and perhaps their particular job is at risk, or they're going through some really specific challenges within the business, and we need to demonstrate value with some empathy. So particularly if we still need to make the customer to make a very hard decision, we need to make sure that we're actually delivering this with some empathy and making it clear. So let's give an example here. Let's just say for a moment that we actually need to approach the customer to make a decision that might involve them speaking to the CEO. Now let's just imagine for a moment the CEO is, is really difficult to get hold of, and so we're asking this person to do something that is quite difficult and actually might mean that there may be a status challenge, or they may have some real emotional difficulty with moving that forward. So how about we make empathy part of the delivery of value for that person? Well, what we might do is in the frame of making it strategic, contextual, personalized, we might frame our email stating the challenge and how we may be able to support them. So an example might be, hey, Mr. Customer, I know we're moving towards something really exciting here. The results that we're looking for are this, this, and this, and we know it's going to be really beneficial to you. The team, and the CEO. As you speak to the CEO, we know not all conversations are easy to have, and so we'd like to offer you this and give that specific value in order to help make the conversation easier and much more impactful when you speak to the CEO. We'd also like to come alongside you where you feel that's appropriate, or at least bring along one of our executives to allow you to ask questions or pass on questions to us. Now you can see that dialogue dialogue that I'm going through here might be something that you speak to them over the phone with or contextualize it inside an email. But essentially what you want to do is demonstrate empathy in places where those are relevant, but include it in almost everything that you do. It needs to meet a clear internal and external need. So just be conscious of the fact that a customer is not just looking for an external need, but we're also trying to appease and satisfy a very internal need as well. And those things need to be considered. So as think about those things, it's really important that those strategic disciplines, or those disciplines for value, including strategic, including being contextual and personalized and empathetic, are really important for us to have in mind as we deliver value for customers. So before we go any further here and we look at the— how we apply this, it's important that when I say delivering value, delivering value can actually come in many different formats, but there are actually actually 4 really clear pillars or value pillars that we can consider in regards to the kind of value that we might deliver. So I'm going to give you 4 value pillars, the 4 value pillars that we see most often that really make a significant difference to how an organization perceives you and the kind of advantages that you can develop in your organization to really stand out. So pillar number 1 for value is value adding, and this is what you do with your products and services to help your customers gain a result and/or eliminate a pain. So essentially, anything that they've bought from you, when you're value adding, you're helping the organization, the customer, to get best use from the products and services that you have. We're helping them to gain the result that we've promised, eliminate a pain, get a gain directly with the product or service. Then we have value creation. That's number 2. That's pillar number 2. It's about identifying and designing from the insight of the customer, from what we know about our customer, our customer's market, their goals, that allows us to deliver an unexpected benefit. So meaning, if we have data from the customer that they don't have about themselves, then we have an opportunity to create something from that that is uniquely personalized and identified to add significant benefits to them, something we can now create. That's value creation. Then we have value realization, number 3 pillar, which is really the effective use and management of resources that enables us to deliver the services and products to the organization. So it's not just about what we add or create, it's actually about the full effective use of the resources and management. This is where the value chain comes in, and we may think about all the different touches that a customer may need to go through before they receive some something or are able to get a result from something that you've sent. So thinking about the whole journey that's around the value realization is thinking about the whole management of that process. The other value pillar, which is pillar number 4 and the last, are value elements. Now this is the inclusion of very specific psychological, emotional, practical, philosophical distinctions that greatly improves the perceived benefit of your product or service. This was introduced actually by Bain and Company, value elements, and in their research they had determined that companies that had more than one kind of element or attribute of value designed into their products or services not only had the highest metrics of NPS and customer satisfaction scores, but actually were the ones who kept customers the longest. They had greater loyalty attributes, they had greater revenues, they were top in their marketplace. Where a customer can see that there are multiple elements of of value that are uniquely tied together, that are logically consistent, that fit together against their needs. But the more of these elements you can build into your products and services, the greater the opportunity you have to drive greater value with and for your customers from a commercial perspective, but the more that they see as the inherent benefit for them as well. So value pillars are really important. Those are the ways in which we think about the delivery of value with our customers. There are different ways in which you can deliver value, but most importantly are the value disciplines. We need to, when we begin to think about delivering values, think about it in those four lenses: being strategic, being contextual, personalized, and being empathetic. So hopefully that's been really helpful to you in thinking about value and how we master that, why value is so important as a real strategic growth driver. Because it's what enables the customer to see you as a long-term choice, because it's about who you're becoming to them based on what you're providing. So with that in mind, download the document that comes with this particular podcast. I want to provide you with something that you could use, which is simply the blog. You can download and see something from the blog directly with more detail, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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