Use CARE to Prove Your Value to Your Customers

Just because you know what value your services provided to the client, doesn’t mean that they are aware of the same value. There is often a perceived value gap between a customer and their service provider. Also, customers today don’t want value-add, they want value assurance. So, proving and reassuring our value to our customers is increasingly important in todays competitive landscape. One approach we can take to assure value is by using the CARE technique:

C – Context

A – Actions and activities

R – Results

E – Evidence

The first step is providing and restating the Context. You might have started your project and engagement several months ago, and it is very unlikely that the customer will remember the situation they were in back then. What was the context when you initially set the expectations? The more we can expand on the Context the more we target the emotional side of the a value statement. There might also be situations where we can construct pain-chains where we learnt that challenges in one part of the organization caused or lead to problems in other parts. These pain-chains might not be obvious to our customers and by visualizing the connections we can create even stronger value statements.

The second step is communicating the Actions or activities we undertook. They could be the solution we provided, an idea we had, a change we suggested, a perspective or an opinion we brought forward. These action and activities need to be concise, precise and agreed upon. Simplicity is the key to success here.

The third step is to reiterate the Results your actions and activities led to. A person doesn’t necessarily buy into your value statement without seeing the benefits of it. Elaborate on the benefits or the positive consequences of your recommendation helps the customer to realize the value of your actions and activities. A warning though, if we simplify the results too much or if these results are obvious to the client – don’t overstate them. It might make the customer feel like you are overselling them on the value you created.

The last step is providing Evidence. This step is sometimes optional. If you have a great relationship with your customer and they trust you implicitly, you could skip this step. They don't need evidence, they trust your word. But if your customer is a sceptic or this is the first project or engagement together, you need to provide proof or evidence of the value you created. There are several approaches you can take:

• ROI analysis
• Productivity and efficiency gains
• Performance metrics (technical, organizational, or individual)
• Case studies
• Champions and proponents

The most important aspect is that your proof and evidence is true and that you provide additional supporting statement, facts or documents.

Using the CARE approach will help you show your value to the client. It will help you bridge any expectation or value gaps between you and your customer. And it might help you increase the odds of repeated business and additional sales.