The Answer is Value

Did you ever notice when you stay at a nicer hotel that the toilet paper corners are usually tucked down to form a “V”? Did you ever ask yourself “Why?”

Or did you ever wonder why millions of people choose the American Express credit card when there are so many other credit cards available to them? Cards that require no annual fee – and offer better credit terms.

Why are so many Mercedes sold every year when a Ford will get you where you want to go?

In a world where price represents the majority vote on purchasing decisions the above riddles wouldn’t exist. Hotels would all be the same, as would credit cards and cars. The lowest cost provider would always win.

Luckily, for all of us we do NOT live in such a world. We get to chose what we want and how much we are willing to pay. Sales and marketing professionals know that while price is important in every buying decision, it is not the only factor. They know that the real power lies in the perceived VALUE of the product or service by the buyer.

Watch This
I wish you could have been there when my good friend, Joel Davis, Ph D and Professor at the School of Communications at San Diego State University, addressed a group of business professionals to drive home this point of value. He asked two “plants” in the front row to give him their watches (inexpensive ones for the demonstration). He then placed each one in a deflated balloon. He knotted one “as is” and knotted the second after blowing it up - with the watch visible inside. From under the table Joel raised his arm, brandishing a common household
hammer. With one smooth motion he smashed the watch in the flat balloon in about two seconds. He then repeated the same attack on the inflated balloon. But try as he might, the watch remained intact!

“Air” on the Side of Value
Obviously, the watch in the second balloon remained whole because the air acted as a cushion. Metaphorically speaking, the air represents value – the value each business must define for itself and
the target audiences it wishes to serve. If a company has not defined this value internally, validated it externally, and reinforced it continually to its customer
base it is much more likely to get hammered on pricing – especially in this economy.

Value is More Than Hot Air
If you’re thinking this example validates your suspicions that marketing and sales are just a lot of hot air, you couldn’t be more wrong.

You see, value, by definition, is “a fair return in goods and services for money exchanged.” This implies that the “value” must be a benefit or feature that is important to the buyer. Value includes all those reasons that buyers buy from you and those reasons have to be relevant to the buyers’ needs. Hot air just doesn’t cut it.

In the business-to-business world “important” generally means that the product will either increase sales or decrease costs.
Oftentimes it translates into things like quicker turnaround on orders, expertise, better payment terms, advertising support, relationships, the ability to access niche items for customers, shipping complete orders, uniqueness of the product, perceived or real superior performance, brand equity, and on and on.

What’s Your Value?
What value statements trip off the tongues of your
sales force when a buyer pressures them for a price
cut? Are all your employees fluent in them?

Are you folding down those corners on the everpresent roll of TP to demonstrate you care about the value you are delivering? You can do this by proactively communicating those value messages to
your current and potential buyers on a consistent basis. In that way you have armed them against a competitor’s lower price offer. They’ll know why they’re better off with you.

If you’re getting hammered on pricing give me a call. I’ll help you define your value and design and implement a plan to communicate that value to your customers and prospects.

—by Rosemary Walter

Marketing Tips to Clip

For a variety of reasons, not the least being that BTB buyers are
relying on the Internet more and more for gathering information
critical in making purchasing decisions (see This and That below),
many businesses are updating their Web sites. How can you make sure that your new Web site will work harder to bring in and keep interested visitors than your last site did? Here are just a couple of factors (of many) to consider:

How It Looks
The content and presentation of the page should be easy on the eyes- not to win artistic awards, but to be user-friendly. Is the font colorand style easy to read? Is text written for Web reading - brief andto the point? Are there flashing graphics and neon colors that take too long to download? If so, remember you are just one mouse clickaway from being left behind as the visitor clicks on a competitor’s site that gives them the information they want – faster!

How It Works
So ... how quickly does your site deliver the content visitors are looking for? If the navigation is complex (too many drop down menus with category titles and subtitles that are confusing or too similar to one another) you stand the chance of losing the visitor at the Home Page. Ask yourself, “If I were a first time visitor looking for ‘X,’ what would I have to do to find it?” Too many clicks to the end result mean too many chances to lose the visitor’s interest.

How People Find It
How do you increase'traffic? One way is to improve your position
ranking with search engines. To do that avoid using technology like frames, databases, or flash pages on the key pages you want search engines to index for would-be visitors’ search terms. Also try using a mix of popular and not so popular search terms in your titles and metatags so that your site can benefit from higher rankings (page 1 of the search results) on the less popular words as well as placing somewhere in the listing (page 10) for more popular terms.

Like any other marketing effort remember that a good Web site should be designed for the eyes of the customer - not internal egos. Sell the value you deliver throughout by hammering home benefit statements in simple and clear messages.

This & That

Speaking of Web sites...Thomas Register reports that over 70% of BTB respondents expect to use the Web to source, quote and buy (both on and offline) and that 75% used the Internet “more” or “significantly” more in 2002 than they did in 2001.

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INDIVIDUAL COACHING on marketing and business-related topics. This is PERFECT for small to mid-size business owners, general managers of corporate divisions, newly-appointed marketing directors from other business disciplines, and solo practitioners. Services are sold in 3 month increments and allow for varying levels of access to me via phone, fax, and (if local) personal meetings.

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RECORDED VERSIONS of Mosaic’s most popular speeches. Right now the “Top Twenty Tips for Marketing Any Company” and “Selling the Sizzle – Positioning for Market Success” are available. These are effective tools for sparking ideas that can
generate sales and profits for your business.