Value added B2B services: Learn what "adding value" actually means and how to utilise it in B2B

How to add genuine value to your B2B services and products?

The concept of "added-value services" or "value-added services" is extremely confusing because there are so many (inept) applications thereof.

Adding value is one of those hot buzzwords of the day, almost like a fad really.

But does anyone really understand what it means, truly?

Not just what the words themselves mean but what the concept signifies? How do you DEFINE added value? How do you CREATE it for your prospective customers?

Well, I have to say that I've seen so many bad applications of "added value" that I think it might be an idea to clarify the subject somewhat.

B2B added value services — what is "value" and how do you add it?

The concept of "value" is somewhat elusive for most of us, which becomes evident if you ask people to DEFINE its meaning.

The dictionary defines it as "relative or attributed worth, usefulness, importance, or merit" (Macmillan Dictionary).

To take this into the realm of customer-experience, we could state that those concepts of usefulness and importance which THEY have attributed to our products / services / the area in which these are used is what constitutes VALUE for them.

In English: What THEY think would be important for us to have in our services IS valuable to them.

Now, value as such is also a concept attributed to things based on their WORTH. Worth here refers both to its quality / usefulness AND its monetary value.

Thus, if you give something of value for FREE, you are actually DE-valuating it rather than adding value.

But if you increase the awareness of your target group of its usefulness then you will add value to it.

And that's about it in regards to value.

So, how do we add value to our services in the eyes of our target group by adding elements which THEY consider important or useful?

B2B added value services — the principle of providing a sufficient runway

Essentially you can add value to your products and/or services only through making the understanding of them easier for the prospective or existing customer so that he can make his decision and do so with sufficient certainty to avoid feeling he is going out on a limb.

You cannot add value by giving your actual service or products at a lower cost. You cannot give your products or main services for free either.

But you can FACILITATE your customers with a free service which enables them to make the decision to buy.

That kind of help would definitely be important, useful and thus valuable to them.

Now, life is a funny old experience in which certain thinking mechanisms go undetected.

One of these is the human trait of accepting some datum without actually inspecting it, evaluating its suitability for various situations or examining its validity in regards to different things.

These could also be assumptions which are accepted for face value without actually seeing if they're TRUE.

These fixed ideas are generalisations which we adopt often without even noticing.

There's one specific fixed idea that comes to mind here and now in regards to our subject matter:

We ASSUME that clients know what they want and need.

Consequently, we expect them to tell us.

And that's the principal reason why an astronomical number of sales are lost in the world every day.

We await that the customer tells us what he wants and/or needs, so that we could then start selling it to him and so on.

But he doesn't know. He may THINK he knows. He may think he SHOULD know. Most of them certainly think they have to LOOK like they knew.

But actually the client cannot know.

Don't confuse this certainty of knowledge of what a client needs and wants with the market research survey. There, we find out the PET THEORIES and EMOTIONAL ISSUES of your target group which we then use in marketing. It's something else altogether.

The insistence of being right is EMOTIONAL. That's the emotional response to a contradicting reality. It's what they feel strongly about but only as long as THEY don't have to be responsible for it.

It's easy to criticise someone else's actions, manners, decisions, presentations and whatnots.

Criticising, the target person doesn't have to be responsible for the action... and criticism in itself pertains to someone ELSE and THEIR actions. So it's "this is how YOU should bear responsibility for this..." -kind of situation.

But in making the final decision about buying something for HIMSELF, the prospective client IS responsible. Now it is HIS cake, his decision... and one with whose consequences HE will have to live after the fact.

Now it's a different ball game. Now we enter a higher level of certainty, one which very few prospects can attain on their own.

I mean, looking at it rationally... how COULD the prospect really possess the sufficient expertise and experience to make a fully informed decision.

He doesn't have YOUR expertise and experience. If he did then he would be working for you or be a competitor.

He probably feels he must put on AIRS of being equally expert (or more) just so he won't be taken advantage of... but in his heart he knows he isn't.

He daren't play chicken with the real thing.

Oh, it's all right to tell you what YOU SHOULD do... but now it's HIS turn to do the right thing... and he is just scared.

That's hesitation... and that's all it is.

But it is the main barrier to your sales.

It is that customers are not helped to...

-	find out data about the product
-	acquire sufficient certainty of the truthfulness of those data
-	understand more about the products and their use
-	feel comfortable about trusting YOU and your products
-	secure sufficient data and certainty thereof to MAKE the decision
-	make the decision with some conviction / without undue sense of risk
-	know that you are the right / best choice for them
-	know that you will deliver what you have promised.

Now, don't make the mistake of assuming the above list is made out of a whim. It actually depicts most prerequisites to a sale... states of being which the client must achieve in order to make a positive final decision on the proposition you've made.

I'm talking about RELATIVE certainty here, not absolute. Each of these areas must be addressed in your pre-sale presentation if you are to maximise your chances of getting the sale.

That's what is meant with the headline's somewhat cryptic reference to "providing a sufficient runway."

To add value to BOTH you and the client, you need to create a service that PRECEDES the sale, one that ensures the client receives information and gets up to speed and has long enough a runway to get airborne (sign the contract).

This can only be done one way really, because of the all-important necessity to ensure the client TRUSTS us. To trust us he must trust the information we give.

And to make him trust it WE cannot be giving it to him.

Now does that sound complicated or what?

But it's not.

The way you make someone TRUST a datum is simple.

You ensure that HE INVENTS IT.

That's to say, you ask him a question that's NOT obvious or laden with any suggestions on how to reply (or what you expect him to say) and he focusses his attention on the issue and CREATES THE ANSWER.

That answer is a datum... and it is most certainly HIS datum, his idea, his baby... simply because he created it!

It's really that simple.

But it's not at all simple to create a set of questions which can be asked without any problems and whose answers will be the data you WANT your prospect to create.

Yet the degree of difficulty is not the issue here.

The point is that this is the only way to ADD GENUINE VALUE to your services and/or line of products, as seen by the prospective customer.

That's the help HE wants. That's the value HE is looking for.

"Yeah but..." you say, "if that's true then why is anyone buying anything...?"

Well, because they have to buy from someone in order to do THEIR product / service which they then sell onwards.

The "balance of omission" — that NO-ONE has come up with a detailed set of tools to help their prospect to find out about their product and make a risk-free decision — within the B2B sector makes clients stick with their current provider even if they're not all that satisfied.

After all, it took quite a bit of effort to learn THEIR way of operating... and who knows if the new one will be WORSE?

Of course there's NO agreement or law that stipulates YOU need to remain in this status quo.

All right, so if this is so, what's the thing that makes it work?

Let's see then.

Adding value to B2B services — the complexities of prospective clients

What is your prospective client essentially?

Well, for one, he or she is a complex being at the core of things.

This complexity manifests itself in multiple impulses, intentions and expressions, many of which are quite contradicting.

It can be a nightmare to try figuring out the antics of a buyer.

It can be definitely soul-destroying to have to accommodate the sometimes arbitrary whims of demanding customers or someone playing hard to get.

But all these contradictions and unpredictable things are confusing only as long as you try to make sense of them.

There's no sense to make there.

These are not the CAUSE of anything (well, except your headache and aggravation) but SYMPTOMS of one specific phenomenon.

This phenomenon, this all-invasive cause of all his indecision and demands and whatnots... is simply FEAR.

Fear of what?

Well, fear of the decision he is facing and all its parts.

He fears he will miss something important and make his decision based on insufficient or wrong data. He's afraid he makes a mistake and/or a wrong decision.

He is worried that there are some risks involved which he knows not or hasn't realised. He anguishes what consequences might ensue from his decision, of which HE will then be responsible.

He wants to know but he is also influenced by his own sense of importance, so he feels he should be in control... so you can't just TELL him what he needs and what to believe, see?

He wants to trust you but cannot do it on his own. He wants to trust his own judgement but needs your help in doing so.

See. Under all this then is the issue of TRUST.

He does not know whether YOU can be trusted. He does have some doubts about trusting his OWN judgment.

That's what it is, fundamentally. Trust is the underlaying issue, the basic foundation of it.

So, what's the cure?

One thing and one thing only will remedy this:

Loyalty.

Unwavering, genuine loyalty from you to the customer.

Provide him that and you'll see that all contradictions vanish and his unpredictability melts away.

Create an attitude of total loyalty toward your clients and prove it to each of them with your actions.

Loyalty that stops at nothing. Loyalty that works on the principle of "I'll make it go right or DIE TRYING."

That's the only true VALUE you can give, see?

Let me explain.

If you want to add value to your products then you cannot do so without actually having a technological edge, an innovation created by your engineers who can produce a product that's technically superior at the same cost than those lesser products of competitors.

But even then it probably won't take your competitors long to come up with a similar advantage.

Be that as it may, my point here is simply that your PRODUCTS are not where you can add value easily and significantly or so that competitors won't catch up soon.

But you CAN add value for your BUYER. You can most definitely ensure that HE feels absolutely great about using YOUR products and/or services and that NOTHING could ever make him CHANGE his supplier.

You can make HIS life easier.

You can ENABLE him to make those decisions regarding your products. You can make HIM feel certain about his decisions so he won't hesitate or experience stress about the possibility of having made a costly mistake.

Above all, you can create your WHOLE approach to reflect your unwavering, unconditional, and absolute LOYALTY toward the client.

That requires planning your whole approach, really. You must delete all aspects of self-promotion. You must fight the temptation of showing off or telling how big or great your company is. You must adjust your presentation and train your salespeople to avoid stressing YOUR importance...

...and put the positive attention solely on your (future) CLIENT.

You concern yourself with what HE thinks. You interview him for HIS views.

Note that there's a lot more about adding value to your service concept that involves the act of prospecting by way of telemarketing. We actually have another web site that concentrates on B2B telemarketing called www.telemarketingtips.info. Click here to read all about B2B telemarketing.

You create a set of tools with which he will be helped to determine and evaluate the data regarding your products, thus giving him the data he needs to make his decision... and thus increasing his certainty on that the decision he makes is RIGHT.

You can't bribe him with personal benefits in form of money or valuables. You may find it difficult to stay ahead of the competition by always having the most advance products.

But you can gain his trust by first trusting him, pledging your allegiance and loyalty to him in no uncertain way.

Nothing feels better than having the loyalty of someone who's powerful and able.

Loyalty means support, unwavering dedication to do everything in one's power to advance the goals of another person (the client).

Such loyalty is, at the base of things, something clients actually EXPECT of us... and something which it's our INTENTION to provide.

But what's missing is the runway, the set of tools with which the CLIENT realises that he IS receiving such loyalty from your company. You create the system of helping your client decide, you create the tools and you actually NAME the service just like a product...

...and you then sell the idea of it as easier, more certain and risk-free decision-making... one that allows the client to obtain a tailored solution of whose suitability he is guaranteed.

There's a lot more that goes with this but that's the bare bone of it.

And that's essentially the task in adding genuine value... to create a system that truly helps the client AND also makes him PERCEIVE your help and loyalty!

If you're interested to find out whether your B2B product line could be added with tremendous value in the eyes of your target group, read the presentation of our B2B Success Marketing Analysis introductory service.

Alternately, if web site presentation is currently more important to you, click here to read about our Internet Marketing & Search Engine Optimization Analysis.

And whatever you do, trust your own instincts in creating value for your services.

Best wishes,

Harry Kafka
HDK Consultants Ltd
32 Manning Close
Richmond Square
East Grinstead RH19 2DR
West Sussex, United Kingdom
Tel. 01342-328 116
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