By Jennifer Blanchard | HRTools.com Business Writer
In the current economy, companies are doing all they can to “hunker down” and wait out the passing storm. Doing so, however, is often a HUGE mistake. Because while you’re sitting on the bench waiting for times to get better, your competition is out there making deals, stepping up their business and finding new, innovative ways to engage and add value to their customers.
Then when the economy gets better, they’ll be getting all the customers while you’re trying to recoup from all the down time.
Don’t make the same mistake as everyone else!!
Stand out. Work smart. And do things your competition wouldn’t dream of doing during an economic hardship.
Here’s how.
Provide Added Value
During times where customers are wary about how much money they’re spending and what they’re spending it on, it’s important for companies to find ways to add to their value.
Here’s an example.
Whole Foods Market—The national healthy grocery store chain hosted an in-store food- and drink-tasting event the day before the Super Bowl to get customers to come to the store and purchase their game-day food there.
This adds value because it allows customers to sample foods and drinks before they purchase them, that way they know whether or not they like the food/drink, which saves them time, money and makes their lives easier.
Whole Foods used the Super Bowl as an opportunity to:
- Help customers make healthy game-day food choices
- Spotlight the fact that they sell prepared platters
- Allow customers to sample some of the food and beverages carried in the store
On top of those three reasons, Whole Foods also used the Super Bowl as a chance to gain more exposure for its stores because there were likely people attending the parties the Whole Foods customers threw that weren’t currently customers. But if they tasted something at the party they liked, they may just find themselves shopping at Whole Foods next time they need groceries.
By creating new “products” or value-add services for your company, you can help off-set your prices and give customers additional reasons why they should use your service or buy your product.
Adding Value to Your Services and Products
Now you’re probably wondering—how do I add value to my business? One of the best ways to add value is to figure out what your customers need and give it to them for “free.”
Here are some examples of ways to add value.
When you sit down and really think about it, there are lots of ways companies can add value for little-to-no money. And if you market this added value as “included in the price of the service/product,” you will likely attract more (and keep more) customers.
Finding Ways to Add Value at Your Company
If you’re interested in finding ways to add value to your company’s products and services, here are some steps you can take.
Steps:
- Understand Your Customers—First and foremost, before you can start to add additional value, you need to make sure you understand your customers: their needs, their wants, what makes them buy, what will make their lives easier, additional products/services they might need from you, etc. If you don’t understand your customers, you won’t know what they need, so it will be difficult for you to add value.
Once you understand your customers, you can begin to look for places to add value.
For example, if you are a bread bakery, your customers are probably looking for ways to trim their waistline or get healthier (especially considering it’s still “New Year’s Resolution” season). So you could add value for them by offering whole wheat or whole grain breads; you could also add value by bringing in a nutritionist to conduct in-store seminars on healthy eating and/or living.
- Gather Your C-Level Executives, Managers, Supervisors and Employees—
and see what ideas they have for how you can add value to your business. You can do this in a few ways:
--Sit them all down, either together or separately, and ask them for ideas
--Let everyone know you’re looking for ideas for ways to add value and ask them to e-mail you if they have anything to suggest
--Use the good ‘ol, go-to suggestion box and ask employees to write down any value-adding ideas they have and place them in the box
I guarantee they will come up with hundreds—if not thousands—of ideas. Not all of the ideas will be usable, but it’s very likely a good percentage of them will be.
Your employees are your best untapped resource. They know your customers as much—if not better—than you do because they work with them on a day-to-day basis. They listen to your customers’ concerns. They know what your customers need and want. And because of this, your employees are your best resource for discovering ways to add value.
Nurture your employees and they will give you everything your business needs to add value and survive and thrive, now and in the future.
Also, you need to make sure you reward and recognize your employees for all their hard work, especially if you use one of their ideas (you could even offer a special reward to any employee whose idea gets used).
Rewards don’t have to be extravagant or monetary, just something to say “thanks for offering up your suggestions.” Low-cost, but effective, rewards could include:
--Throwing a pizza party at lunch time
--Bringing in mid-day snacks
--Letting employees leave a couple hours early on a Friday
--Allowing employees to wear jeans to work one day
--Giving employees one additional day of paid time off
- Weed Through the Suggestions—After you’ve received all the suggestions, sit down with your C-level executives and/or managers and determine which ideas you want to try to implement. You’ll want to look at ideas and categorize them in whatever way makes sense for your organization, such as separating them into “plausible”/ “non-plausible” or “to use now”/ “to use later.”
You definitely want to look at each idea in its entirety and visualize how it could potentially add value for your customers and help your bottom line. If you need further explanation or clarification, be sure and get it from the person who offered up the idea.
- Implement the Ideas—Once you’ve weeded through all the ideas you received and determined which ones will best add value for your customers and help your company the most, it’s time to implement some of them.
Here’s an example to get you started: If you’re a bookstore, you could implement the following ideas:
--Offer in-store creative writing workshops once a week
--Bring local authors in to read from their book(s) and sign autographs
--The week before an author’s new book comes out, offer customers a discount on the author’s previous books so they can buy/read them before the new book comes out
--Create a weekly/monthly newsletter that discusses topics of interest to your customers, as well as include information about any sales you’re having or any other information regarding your store that customers might like to know
--Have a kids’ story hour once a week and invite customers to bring their kids in to listen to the story being read. Offer cookies and punch, if you want.
- Give it a Test Period—Once your new value-adding ideas are implemented, you want to determine a test period for it. I suggest no less than 90 days, but depending on what the idea is, you may even want to give it 6 months.
Not all ideas will float right away. And some might sink to the bottom at some point. Adding value is as much trial-and-error as anything else in business. You have to try a bunch of different things to see what works for you and your customers.
- Evaluate—Once your test period is over, it’s time to sit down and evaluate. How did the value-add ideas hold up? One thing you want to be careful of is measuring success only by an increase in revenue. Although this is important, you also need to look at what else the ideas did for your company: did they help you get new customers? Did they help you retain customers you already had? Did your word-of-mouth advertising increase?
There are hundreds of ways you can judge a value-added idea, so don’t let money be your only determiner. After all (and though it sounds cliché), if you build it, they will come (and come back…and spend money…and tell their friends…you get the picture).
Discovering ways to add value to your company’s products/services can not only help you weather an economic storm, it can also help you attract customers who might be leery of spending money. By “proving your worth” (offering additional services/products to help off-set your costs), you will help customers choose you over your competition.
Don’t be like everyone else: Surge ahead despite the economic crisis by finding ways to improve your customers’ lives.
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