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Increasing your margin and moving pianos

 Valcort 35 Keys to Business Growth:  #10 Understand why customers value your products and services as well as your competitors’ products and services, and what drives their choice.

When she answered she was pleasant, helpful and engaging.

I needed a good quality mover that could protect my sleek black grand piano from harm as I moved from one home to a new one. She was a good sales person for Company A and was selling their standard moving services. For me, I wanted more than moving services, I wanted my piano moved without a scratch.

As I talked through the process with her, it became more and more frustrating. She was articulate and worked hard to tell me it would be safe, but she could not give me the assurance I was looking for.  Simply, she didn’t offer what I wanted to buy.

I needed a better answer.  So I called her competitor. The rep of Company B responded with a similar pitch, reassuring me that my piano would be safe. I also noted he was more expensive. Then, he surprised me. For a small additional fee, he offered to warrantee his service with an additional insurance policy and guarantee the piano would not be damaged. Eureka.

In the end, I paid 30% more to get what I wanted.

Too often we are caught up in selling our familiar products and services to potential customers without understanding what they truly value. A dear friend of mine, past EVP Marketing at a Fortune 50 telecom, once told me: “What customers are buying is not always what a company is selling.”

If you don’t know what your customers value about your products and services, you’re leaving money on the table and missing an opportunity to deeply engage and create their loyalty. Further, if you don’t know what your competitors are offering and how they deliver more value, you’re doubly behind.

Premium pricing, loyalty and advocacy exist where high value is perceived and delivered. In my case, I gladly paid more because I valued Company B’s services more than Company A’s.

The values people hold, drive the choices they make. This VALCORT principal of growth is true of all your stakeholders -- your customers, employees, vendors and shareholders. If you know what they value, you can create better engagement, trust, loyalty and advocacy. Unfortunately, a vast majority of organizations don’t know how to capture and understand what their stakeholders value.

If you’re interested in improving your margins (what would 30% more mean to your bottom line profitability?), increasing customer loyalty, and sparking advocacy, find out what your customers value about you, your products and your services. And equally important, find out what they value about your competitors.

Then position your organization as a premium, responsive problem solver with unique, valuable products and services and watch your bottom line grow.

 
 

From all of us here at The Valcort Group:  Merry Christmas!

 
 
 

The Christmas Factor

For Christians the world over, Christmas is one of the year's holiest observances, with the remembrance of the birth of Jesus Christ both solemn and celebratory.

But it is people of all faiths and traditions who have also made Christmas the year's single largest economic stimulus, as sales increase dramatically in almost all retail areas. The U.S. retail industry generated an astonishing $3 trillion during the Christmas holiday in 2013, 19.2 percent of the total retail sales for the year.

The impact of Christmas extends far and wide. Click to read more.

 
 

Marketing trends that will impact your business in 2015

Management guru Peter Drucker said that “attempting to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.”

That has stopped almost no one from doing it, and in fact we all make decisions, major and minor, in business and all of life, based on our understanding—puny though it may be—of what the future holds.

With all of this in mind, we’ve scoured the business and marketing worlds to put together a list of 7 important predictions of what marketing trends are worthy of our consideration.  They include the rise of transparency, the move from globalization to personalization, and the rise of Generation Z. 

Click here to read about your future!