Sometimes it's important to remind yourself exactly why your customers buy from you - what it is that adds value to their lives. Carefully consider the emotional benefits customers feel when they buy a product or service from you.

One of my clients who owns and manages a large corporate training company recently told me that after years of careful consideration and extensive experience, she had discovered that she is really in the business of creating 'possibilities.' What her business really does is to design, develop and deliver tailored training programs for senior managers in large corporations. She has developed a powerful vision for her company, which is focused around enabling people to be the best they can be. She is also committed to a set of specific and achievable business goals that guide her marketing efforts.

Identifying the value-adding factor in business

What she realised was that she enables senior corporate managers to be the best they can be by creating a space in their lives where possibilities are realised. These possibilities included managers' abilities to believe that they could:

• change their lives for the better
• build better futures for themselves
• make bigger contributions to the quality of their working lives
• become powerful role models or leaders
• create and sustain honest relationships

She found that the list was virtually endless and that the essence, or the value-adding component of her work was her ability to create an environment that could potentially help people change their lives. Another colleague is the owner of a small boutique city florist shop. She appropriately remarked that what her business does is to select, display and sell flowers and floral arrangements.

Her vision for her company was allowing people to enjoy a range of sensory experiences. She measured the success of her business by the volume of product sold on a weekly basis and the quarterly profit achieved to the targets set.

After much discussion we all agreed that the essence or the value-adding component of her work was her ability to ''add colour, fragrance and the feelings of positive esteem and joyfulness'' to the people who bought or received her flowers and floral arrangements.

Value adding is about defining the tangible emotional benefit that a customer receives when they do business with you or when they buy your product or service.

If you don't add an emotional value to the quality of your customers'' lives in some unique way, your business will not be sustainable for the longer term. So perhaps you can take some time out this weekend to reflect on exactly what business you are really in and what is the true value being added!

If you can't see or qualify the value you add, then take some time to seriously consider, feel and imagine some of the possibilities that you could be adding. This can be done by exploring what it is that you are passionate about doing, and also by reminding yourself how you were feeling when you started your business and why you chose to start it in the first place.

Try to step into your customers' shoes and imagine what positive emotions they may feel.

Janet Sernack successfully runs her own learning and development consultancy, Compass Learning, where she makes a difference to small and large businesses by facilitating culture change programs, learning organisation initiatives and improved business and marketing planning.

She has also held senior management positions in the wholesale and retail sectors, most recently as Marketing Development Manager with Grace Bros.

Connect with Janet

Email: janetsernack@gmail.com
Websites: www.janetsernack.com, www.compasslearning.com.au and www.thegloballeadershipretreat.com
Blog: janetsernack.blogspot.com