In my never ending quest to become a better entrepreneur, I started reading a new book. I got it from one of my neighbors who is in the selling business, and she said it’s her favorite book, so I thought why not. Well, I’m only 50 pages into it, and it’s already got my head swimming with new ideas. I’m sure I’ll be coming back to this in future posts, but the first major lesson is in adding or providing value. Now, this sounds obvious. Of course you provide value, why else would someone pay you?
The twist on this is just to provide value, for the sake of helping others. I’m still struggling a bit with this myself, since it’s a lot of work to do blog posts, email newsletters, fancy SAP products and consulting, just to help others. Despite that, just reading through the chapters started to give me a perspective on ways to build new customers. Again, this is material I’ve heard before in other ways, but sometimes just hearing it enough helps it to sink (at least for me).
So, the concept is simple. Provide value for others, and in the end, it will come back to you. Now, it’s a fine line as to what value truly is. In my world, it might mean giving away some of my products to small to midsized customers. It might mean doing some free consulting in my “spare time”. It might mean recommending competitors products or services because they are more mature. It will definitely mean continuing to blog and sharing my learning experiences to anyone willing to read my stuff.
so my question today is, how are you providing value to your customers? prospects? anyone in your life for that matter? And hardest of all, how can you do it without ulterior motives involved 🙂 I’m still battling this, but even so, the idea of providing as much value as possible is clearly important.
Thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike