Always Add Value

Have you ever seen Miracle on 34th Street? That’s the AAV I’m talking about. That part of the film when Santa starts telling the parents where to go if Cole’s don’t stock the toys? Now I’m not suggesting you start sending your top clients to your competitors when you have a stock issue, but the premise behind this is all about value and prioritising your customer’s needs over your own.

Don’t focus on your ABC – always be closing. The wrong behaviour to adopt is seeing this adage as always be closing deals. For me, this is all about focus on your end goal and making sure that each contact with your client gets you closer to that end goal. Agreeing next steps and both parties agreeing what part they play in that agreement is key to moving forward. Let’s face it, if you’ve been in sales for some time you’ll hopefully know how to close the deal – you’ll feel it coming. But do you really know how to add value?

Just like Santa, he thought less about the bottom line of the business and more about the customers he would help. The result? Improved customer loyalty and increase in profits! So how can this be applied to your world?

It’s simple really – your value is what you do to make your customers better at what they do. Having worked with hundreds of businesses over my relatively short tenure in the commercial world I can say that this is true of every company I have worked with. Once you strip away all the “value propositions”, the marketing brochures, the “gift of the gab”, very simply your value is what you offer your clients day in, day out that makes their lives easier, saves them time, saves them money, increases their performance ….

AAV is always add value. Your expertise and knowledge is the thing that is valuable to your customers. You will know all the challenges and pitfalls as well as the potential gains and successes – you are there to guide them to make that informed decision by educating them on what will work for them. For every conversation, think about your customer and get into their world, think about what would make things better and how you can initiate that change.

The successful sales person thinks AAV for every customer conversation, the ones out for quick wins think ABC!

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