Adding Value

by Robin Wheeler, March 2006

Simply put, the key to business success in the twenty first century is in adding value, to your customers, your organisation and your broader community. But what is value and how do you add it?

Neither aspect of this question is easy to answer. Getting a grip on what value is in your business, and then going about adding it, involves incredible insight, ingenuity and resolve. When you get it right, though, you and your business will be successful and sustainable.

Value is the difference between what you do and what everyone else in your industry does. It is the often intangible edge, the magic, the distinguishing factor you contribute on top of the basic offering everyone else delivers.

Value makes the difference between just being in business and being extraordinary, between being good and great. It is beyond a commodity, it is a life-changing element you deliver in addition to your commodity that makes a difference to your customers and stakeholders’ businesses and lives.

For example, you may sell a product like fresh vegetables, or deliver a service like consulting. Those are commodities. You may compete in the market through better quality or lower price, but there is little room for advantage in those factors. Plus, competitors can easily replicate them, so you will work hard to stay in the game.

But if you sell fresh vegetables geared towards what your customers want and need, say by washing and packaging them into ready-made salads, you are adding value and can charge a premium for the product. You can make a bigger margin because you are no longer selling vegetables and competing on price. You are selling a lifestyle, which customers value much more.

Or if, through consulting, you sell customer success, not just services delivered, you are adding value and will become indispensable to your clients. If you understand their needs and deliver outcomes that make them successful, you will build sustainable relationships and a thriving business.

To add value in your business, you need to do the following:
  • Be customer focused, which involves gearing your business around your customers not your own internal processes
  • Be comfortable with uncertainty and change, which means being flexible and responsive not governed by a need for stability
  • Be people driven by basing your business on human needs and contributions not systems and procedures
  • Be a committed learner, a person and an organisation pro-actively growing all the time
  • Have an entrepreneurial stance wherever you fit into the scheme of things, because only through being enterprising, innovative, financially astute and dedicated to service can you stay ahead of the curve
  • Be yourself for a living, because that you way you live your business, give your best, and enjoy yourself most.
When you are adding value optimally, you are successful in the truest sense. Your customers are successful, you have thriving internal and external relationships, and the money follows.