Knowing Your Worth

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Skill Five Customer Value & Measurement

Salespeople carry a message of impactful customer service. Yet when pressed, very few of these Sales Guys can translate their service into dollars and cents. We at River Heights Consulting compare Value-Added selling to standing on a downtown street corner handing out five dollar bills. Some of the people you help may be homeless folks in dire need of a good meal and some of them may be millionaires hustling over to their club.  We prefer a focused and value-metric approach where you understand specifically how your service impacts the customer. Further, just like the loan you made to your brother-in-law last April, you need a system to remember the value you provided in the past.

In conversation after conversation I ask sales people these three questions:

  • Who is your most important customer?
  • What did you do to add value for them last week?
  • What did you do to add value for them during the week of January 23rd, 2005? 

The answers to the first two questions are always spontaneous and quick. It’s the third question that separates the good from great. Rate yourself based on this scale.

1 - Sometimes provide “value-add” service with the products you sell. When making sales calls you often present the feature without thinking about the benefit to the customer.

3 – Regularly provide “value-add” service to your accounts. It sounds corny, but features and benefits is a regular part of your selling vocabulary.

5 – Provide “value-add” service and sometimes use examples of this service when making sales presentations. Often the benefit you describe has nothing to do with a product.

7 – You provide service, and can convert your service into dollars and cents. You will present the dollar savings to key customer contacts. Before talking about a product, you attempt to think about the payback to your customer.

10- The gold standard in selling. You make it a habit to record the dollarized value of your “value-adds” to customers at all levels. On a quarterly basis you present your customer with information that confirms and reinforces a measurement of the service you provide.

 As always, we would love to hear how you scored on this little quiz….

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