customer values

The Prime Directive for Service

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Customer relationships are valuable, fragile, and the foundation of your business. Your customer-service personnel are your front-line representatives, the face of your business. When something does not go as planned, how they respond to your customer-in-need makes all the difference in how that customer appraises the value of your relationship. How are your service people trained to respond? Do they deliver a scripted reply, based on what they can see on their computer screen, and …

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Creating Customer Value

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The marketplace is noisy, filled with commodities of all sorts, pitched to the masses, often using low price as the seductive hook. When the objective is to get orders, as many as possible, quickly and easily, then offering a low price can attract the crowd. Low price is obvious, direct and easy to evaluate for these buyers; its benefit is the same for everyone. If your growth strategy is to market your offering as a …

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Do You Value Innovation?

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If your business is customer-centric, then you appreciate that your growth is linked to how well and consistently your products, services and people create strategic value for your customers – generating quantifiable benefits, strengthening their competitive advantage and accelerating their progress. Creating that value transcends the fulfillment of an immediate customer need, to ensuring that your solution also contributes to their future, to the achievement of their goals. This is only possible if you’ve discovered what …

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Adapting to Customer Centricity

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Bob Schultek Author of  The Gauntlet In this increasingly customer-centric market, here are some organizational issues to consider: To generate growth, profitability and sustainability, ensuring that a business is continually creating strategic value for customers is a primary responsibility for leadership. Creating value for the business begins by first creating value for customers; customer value is monetized to validate its contribution to business value. To reliably create strategic value and strengthen sustainability, the business: –Discovers what customers value, …

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Why Customers Buy More

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Bob Schultek Author of The Gauntlet The most productive way to grow sales is to increase orders from current customers. As a result, many organizations, seeing themselves as suppliers of products or services, consider how to sell more of their offerings to their customers. But every supplier is just a hired hand…employed to do a job that produces benefits for a customer who doesn’t care about their products or services. Discovering how these benefits contribute to the …

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Powerful Moments of Connection

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  Last weekend, a few of my closest friends and I gathered to share memories, stories and laughter at our college reunion. Each of us wandered off at times to reflect on our personal journey during those years, but by far, the most rewarding, enjoyable moments occurred when we were together, reconnecting with the experiences that created our bond. In addition to being the essence of a meaningful lifetime, enduring relationships are the lifeblood of a sustainable …

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Ideas Don’t Drive Change

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Bob Schultek Author of The Gauntlet We are bombarded with new ideas from all directions. Some are fascinating enough to capture our attention, but usually, they don’t motivate us to change. Our customers share this experience. What does drive customers to consider change is when clearly proposed benefits generated by ideas, products and services go beyond fulfilling a need, to helping achieve a goal. Making the effort to discover why meeting a need is important, how …

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Do Your Customers Prefer You?

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Defeating Commoditization Tom was concerned that his business was becoming increasingly commoditized. More and more often, his customers were specifying what they wanted, as if they were reading from a product bulletin. Tom’s sales team was generating quotes in response to these requests. There was little dialogue with the customer beyond responding with price and delivery, or reacting to some competitor’s quote. I asked Tom: “What makes your business unique…what offering do you own?  Why …

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The Peace of Resolution

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What’s Next For Your Business? Well, it’s finally over!  After months of noise and drama, we’ve had our election and can now enjoy the “peace of resolution.”  We know the results and, with some reflection and analysis, we’ll plot our future path.  After achieving a major goal or accomplishing a key milestone, it’s an ideal time to pause and evaluate what’s working in your business, what needs improvement and what is constraining you. This week …

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Producing Promised Value

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Winning When Your Customer Does Early in my career, one customer abruptly ended a meeting when I spent more time talking than I did listening.  He said, “We’ve been meeting for more than 15 minutes and you have not yet asked a question about my business, my goals or my problems.  I don’t need your products – I need solutions.  Come back when you can add value to our discussion.” This was a tough but …

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