VALUE IS MORE THAN MONEY
Although Barry Maher’s lever is heavily price-driven, some customers want more than a good product at a fair price;
they need someone to help them navigate the use of the product or service so they can best utilize it to their advantage.
Brad White is vice president of sales for AddVenture Products (www.addv.com), a manufacturer and distribu- tor of printed advertising specialty items. The company’s bread-and-butter item is a specialized compressed T-shirt that can be shaped in any of hundreds of ways to form a unique logo giveaway. In an industry where a company that does $1 million in sales volume is the general mea- sure of success, White has personally sold multiple millions each year—and is one of the largest volume sellers in his industry.
AddVenture sells its products through a worldwide network of advertising specialty distributors that can select from among several vendors for the products they sell to end users. To differentiate his company from others that offer similar products, White has found suc- cess by positioning himself as a partner rather than a vendor.
“My ultimate goal is to have all the distributors sell my stuff and no one else’s,” admits White. “There are several ways to do that; but I believe the most effective way is to be the most valuable vendor to the customer.”
Value takes many forms, but in White’s cutthroat world of advertising specialties, he has become an 800-Pound Gorilla by creating opportunities for his partners to make money.
“Our signature T-shirt product is screen printed and then squeezed into a shrink-wrapped shape of whatever
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you want. There are hundreds of options—round, square, logo-shaped; whatever shape you want to create,” explains White. “I can’t expect each of my dozens of partners to know all of the cool applications my product can fulfill;
each of them has hundreds of products to learn. Knowing that, I’ve decided that for everyone’s sake, I need to work much more closely with my distributor/partners than most people in my industry are used to.”
Each call White receives from a distributor or partner is handled much differently than the callers have come to expect with other vendors. “These guys are used to peo- ple that are taking T-shirt orders. I want to work with them as a marketer—to help them see the potential of the product, and to look beyond the product itself. If we can all work together to get the most out of every opportunity, then everybody benefits—the vendor, his customer, the customer’s eventual end user, and certainly us.”
Though this kind of approach takes longer, White claims that it is infinitely more valuable to everyone involved. “Initially, I’ll ask them, ‘What does the eventual buyer of the product want to achieve with this T-shirt?
What’s the goal of the purchase? What does it mean to the eventual recipient of the item? What does the buyer want the end user to do, feel, or experience as a result of having this item?’ These are the kinds of questions that many in our industry just may not think to ask but are critical to the project’s success.”
The end result may be much different from what the buyer was originally seeking, but in White’s view, that’s a good thing. “It means the customer got what he really needed rather than what he thought he wanted,” says White.
“There’s a huge difference.”
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Case in point: A major brewery came to one of White’s distributors knowing what it wanted but not quite sure of what it needed. “They had created an opportunity to hold an instant-win contest,” White explains. “They wanted to give away a total of four week-long vacations for four to a private island destination and do it in a unique way. The distributor thought it might be something our company could help with, and since we had worked together on some other projects, he and I began working as a team to solve this for the client.” White learned that the campaign’s goal was to move buyers of 6-packs of the product up to the 12-pack using the instant-win incentive inside the larger package. Even if buyers didn’t win the trip, however, the brewer wanted the in-pack incentive to have value to each person who received it rather than just being something that would be thrown away. The client also wanted the item to identify the brand longer-term—such as would happen with wearing a T-shirt—which is what led the distributor to call White.
“We brainstormed the project, and eventually created a dynamite program for the client: a printed T-shirt that was compressed to look like the unique bottle shape of the brand and that would fit inside the center of a 12-pack of 12-ounce bottles,” says White. “It was shrink-wrapped with a paper insert that described what was inside the package and explained that four lucky winners would find a voucher for a trip for four to the private island.”
The brewer loved White’s concept. It placed an order for 500,000 compressed T-shirts, and the promotion was a huge success. “The giveaway created enormous buzz, their 12-pack sales increased dramatically, and their brand was everywhere,” says White. “We helped them achieve their goal, and we achieved ours in the process.”
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To prepare for a sales call, AddVenture’s Brad White uses the acronym A-V-G, which stands for “average” in baseball. The three letters represent the three things he considers prior to a sales call:
Audience. White does his homework prior to the call, whether it’s on the phone or in person. “Web sites are great because that’s where a company will tell you who they want you to think they are,” White says.
“You’ll learn what’s important to them on their site.
You’ll learn who the company officers are, where their locations are, their range of products or services, and other relevant bits of information that you’ll need to know during the sales call.”
Value. This is where White assesses what he brings to the table personally, and how it adds to the potential equation. “Where is my value to them? How can I benefit them and be aware of it so I can bring it up at the right time in our conversation?”
Goal. “What is my goal in this sales call, and how can I look for potential common goals between me and my contact so that we can achieve some results together?” asks White. “By being aware of my goal at all times, my communications are more valuable;
they’re not just open-ended, but they lead to a point.”
TAKEAWAYS
Adding Value
Adding value beyond price is a fundamental prac- tice of almost every 800-Pound Gorilla. In addition to the product or service provided for the money,
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often there is something deeper and more profound that is exchanged when an 800-Pound Gorilla is involved.
Value means different things to different people.
Although sometimes equated with money, what’s valuable to one person may not be at all valuable to another. Items or actions of value that 800-Pound Gorillas deliver successfully may include things like superior service, creative ideas, the feelings about a particular brand, or over-and-above partnerships with shared risk. The important thing is that the item or action must be seen as valuable to the customer—regardless of the giver’s perceived value.
The positioning of value relative to price can be critical in establishing good feelings about the value delivered. By effectively managing the per- ceived value of what you sell, you can manage the customer’s ‘delight factor’ relative to your product or service. Help your customers understand what a great value they’re getting, and you’ll have more customers.
The more exclusive you can make your added value, the more dominant you can become. If your product or service is the only one that can deliver on a certain value proposition, you have the potential to be an 800-Pound Gorilla.
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