Create Opportunities During the Most Ordinary Days

This article illustrates the opportunity you have to help your organization become more successful by adding value to your customers.

There’s More Than One Way To Score

Fortunately, it’s much easier to go to the ball in business than it is in soccer. In a soccer game, there is only one ball and there are 14 to 22 players trying to kick it. In business, there are countless opportunities to add value no matter how many competitors are on the field.

Create Value–Added Opportunities

Take out a sheet of paper. On the front side, write down the three most important measures your organization wants to improve this year. Space each line out so you have plenty of room to write after each one. On the back side, write down the three most important measures your customers would like improved. Space these out as well so you have plenty of room to write.

On the front side, after each improvement, write down bullet–point ideas on what you can do to achieve your ideal result. Then, do the same for each of the desired customer measures on the back.

Examples of Creating Value Where Opportunities Seem Hidden

The key to being seen as a play–maker in business is to consistently create value for your organization and customers when it is not at all obvious as to where the opportunities to add value lie.

Here is what the front side might look like:

Increase sales with current customers.

• Talk to ten customers this week. Ask, “What value do you feel you received from your purchase?”
• Look for common denominators in the answers. Then brainstorm for other products and services that can reinforce that value.
• Ask three other people to join in the brainstorming session, particularly people from product development, marketing, and operations.
• Give credit for any new product ideas to other people.
• Volunteer to oversee a team committed to creating a new prototype product that can add increased value to current customers.

Generate sales with new customers.

• Write a white paper for internal purposes on leveraging the lessons learned from current customers called, “Leveraging Customer Insights: How Happy Customers are the Eyes to New Customers.”
• Volunteer to market our company’s products to a small number of people in a new demographic.

Reduce operating costs for current customers.

• Look at the entire flow of creating and selling a specific product to a given customer, and identify the cost to the company at each point in the process.
• Look for overlap in the process for various products.
• Identify where costs are being repeated that could be reduced by timing the overlap of the activities for different products to coincide at the same time.

Here is what the back side might look like:

Close the gap between a customer’s expected time of receiving a product and the actual time of delivery.

• Ask ten customers when they expected to receive a specific product and when they actually received it.
• Let the sales department and the operations department know about the gap from expected delivery to actual delivery.
• Ask for ways to reduce this gap. Offer the suggestion of adding 15% more time to any estimate to keep customer expectations realistic.

Reduce the overall cost of the buying experience for the customer.

• Follow one entire sales process from the time a customer thought about buying a certain type of product to the time they actually bought and used the product. Keep track of both dollars and hours invested by the customer in this process. Do this for ten customers.
• Share your research with members of the marketing, sales, and operations teams. Facilitate a discussion on how the process could become less expensive and less time–consuming for the customer.
• Volunteer to test new ideas for a handful of customers to see what the real–life experience of the new process would be like for them.

Have customers appreciate the marketing they receive from our organization.

• Ask ten customers what they appreciated and what they did not appreciate about the marketing they received on a specific product.
• Ask customers for specific examples of marketing they have received from other companies that they have enjoyed the most.
• Share these customer insights with members of the marketing team. Ask for their input on what could be done to improve the customer experience with the marketing they received.

Finding Hidden Value is Like Searching For Gold

Just as with the successful gold diggers in the 1890’s, digging for hidden value requires perseverance, courage, creativity, and communication skills. It takes courage to do something off the beaten path like conversing with customers and presenting insights to other members of your organization. It takes tact and sincerity to get other people involved in meaningful conversations without them feeling that you are acting in your own best interests.

Having said all of that, it is far easier to find gold via adding value for your organization and customers than it was for people to find real gold by sifting through sand.

“Go to the Ball”

Don’t wait for your boss or another employee to show you how to add more value to your organization and your customers. Step back, clarify the measures your organization and your customers want improved, identify ways to add value, and then go after those opportunities. And then please meet with my six–year–old soccer players to help them “go to the ball.”