How to Increase Sales by Creating More Value for Your Customers

You hear a lot about creating "value" for customers in the world of business, but I sometimes ask myself, do sales people really understand the meaning of this word? I think there is more of a tendency to try to get more value "from" customers rather than providing more value" to" customers. The most important thing for any sales person to understand about value is not how they understand it but much more importantly, how customers perceive it.

Well first and foremost, everybody wants to feel like they are important to somebody. When a customer spends their hard-earned money they want something in return. They want an experience that boosts their emotional well-being and basically to get that "feel good factor!" You go to a hairdresser to get your hair done and to hopefully look better when you leave than when you entered. However, most would agree that the way you are treated while you are there is of equal if not more importance. If you think about this small example, it can really be applied to any purchasing experience. What can a business offer me that is unique and that makes me feel better? It may make me feel better for ten seconds or it may make me feel better for 2 years, but the end result is a positive emotion.

Empathy feeds the Ego

The busy world we live in today makes it harder to make friends and to socially interact and I believe this leaves a gap that people want to fill in some way or other. They want people to care about their problems, their needs and so forth. If a sales person can do this they are well on their way to creating excellent value for the customer. Of course in the field of selling, we need to match this empathy with our product or service and link them up. Customers hate to feel like a number and when they feel they have been treated this way, they have absolutely no loyalty to whatever they are buying.

Beat the Competition with Lots of Value

You could be working in an industry where there is lots of competition and everything feels saturated and copied by all your competitors. Well even where there is a high level of competition, you can still stand out from the crowd and take the competition to a superior level. All you simply need to do is give the customer a better and more unique experience than they get anywhere else. This doesn't mean that you have to pay more to get or keep that customer, but at the same time, a price has to be paid. One example could be to train staff to be very customer orientated by rewarding them for better service.

It's Hardly Ever about Price

A lot of sales people really don't understand the very basic relationship between price and value. This is because customers will often talk about price and this misleads the sales person. However to think that price is so important is a serious underestimation of how complex human beings can be. I can't really tell you all the reasons why, but customers frequently say things that are actually quite different from what they are really thinking. A lot of this will come from a defensive survival mechanism that people have inbuilt in their personalities.

The only area where price is important is in the commodity sector. This basically means that what you are buying can be easily copied and sold at a lower price somewhere else. This is probably one of the worst sectors to be in when it comes to selling because the sales person plays a very minor and almost insignificant role. If you can't provide value as a sales person, you may as well start looking for a different job or industry.

The consequences of great customer value are really positive for the sales person in many different ways. One of the most important of these is customer retention and loyalty. When a customer feels that they have experienced something really great with a sales person, they are more than happy to repeat the experience and to tell all their friends about it too. It's well worth brainstorming different ways to provide better value for the customer because the short and long-term rewards will be very satisfying and financially rewarding too.

David Lynch is a Sales Training Designer & Accomplished Author. He has more than 20 years experience in a variety of industries including software, insurance & hospitality. If you would like to learn more sales skills from David you can download a Free Copy of his E-book "25 Mistakes To Avoid When Selling" at http://www.saleswillgrow.com/freesalestraining2.html