In every industry, today, there’s an urgent battle being waged for customer ‘ownership’. The winners of this battle will achieve higher sales and profitability…and the losers will become a commodity with an uncertain future.
Ultimately, customer ownership is all about creating, delivering and communicating compelling Value. Customers demand it and businesses promise it, but there’s a huge lack of clarity to what Value really is. Let’s keep it simple; there are only 3 kinds of Value…Functional, Emotional and Financial Value. That’s it!
- We deliver Functional Value when we…
- sell products and service that actually work for our target customers.
- are open or available when they need us.
- provide the information, the coaching and encouragement that customers need to wisely choose and effectively use what we sell.
- create policies and processes that make us easy, efficient and consistent to do business with.
…that’s Functional Value!
- Next is Emotional Value. Most business people struggle with this one. They think it’s some airy-fairy thing that can’t be defined…and they’re dead wrong!
Quite simply, we deliver Emotional Value when our customers feel better about themselves and the world every time they do business with us, and every time they use what they bought from us. That’s it! If we’re not delivering Emotional Value, we’re not really ‘connecting’ with our customers…and we’re in trouble.
- Financial Value is #3. Most businesses put it as #1, but it must be #3 because it’s a function of the previous two.
We deliver Financial Value when our customers believe that they paid a fair and competitive price for all of the Functional and Emotional Value that they get from us. If we don’t deliver functional and emotional value, there can be no Financial Value.
So, are you delivering the right combination of Functional, Emotional and Financial Value required to win the battle for ‘ownership’ of your target customers?
