4.Introduction

This is the fourth in a series of articles brought to you by Robert White - CEO of Lucidus Ltd dealing with the subject of 'Value' in the sales process.

So far, we have discussed the problem, the symptoms you might see and causes of them and the the types of value you might look for.

In this installment, we discuss how you go about identifying value.

How do you identify 'Value'

You have probably undertaken some work to identify value in your products and services; you must have in order to produce your sales and marketing materials. This is an important and necessary step, but will probably have been focused largely on what you can provide rather than what your customer needs.

To benefit from your work, you must build on the work you have already undertaken to determine customer value and to clarify what we call your total Value Capability - that is to say the full breadth and depth of the value that your products and services can potentially deliver to any customer.

By looking upstream and downstream of the points at which your products and services have their direct impact, you can confirm your analysis of the quantified and un-quantified value and add the invisible and innovation value. It is important to then 'stress test' claims for value generation to avoid including unfounded claims that the customer will quickly uncover.

What emerges is a set of 'value drivers' that clearly describe, in the terminology of the customer, all of the ways in which your products and services could potentially deliver value to any given customer.

Once you are clear about your Value Capability, your are in a position to produce a simple 'checklist' to help establish what the customer's actual requirements might be but expressed in Value terms. This helps with qualifying a potential customer and provides a strong base for a conversation based on Value rather than feature/function or price.

Blatant plug alert!

Lucidus have products and services based around value identification that greatly simplify the process, thereby shortening the time required to identify and exploit your Value Capability.

Next

In the next part we will discuss the tools you might need when determining value.