Constantly search for ways to add more value

0:04 Hi, you have done to the censure. Wow crazy young. This is the pipe Man here on the Inventor's Pipe Man W four c Y Radio, the Positively Pipeman segment with powerful business strategies from Oh Michael Barberita, the Next Step CFO Guru and uh welcome to the show. Thank you Dan, thanks for having me. So today I want to talk about adding more value. And you know, if you go back to a couple of episodes that we had, we talked about you know, what are the components of a compelling offer. Well, there was scarcity, an urgency, there was risk reversal, Uh, there was bundling which we're going to talk about next week there and there was being indifferent to the outcome and being more transformational versus transactional.

1:11 But today another the fifth component is adding more value to your product or service. So I think, as I mentioned in a previous show, when I was in the frozen cookie dough business, you know, I went in there with no experience and there were four thousand competitors and I was looked at like just another cookie dough. It didn't really matter how great it was the actual product, because there were four thousand other choices and so to try to differentiate myself from the competitors, I offered that one of the problems that they had is they wanted to offer cookies. If they didn't, or even if they did, they really could never bake them nice and fresh because they didn't want to utilize their other for something like the secondary or tertiary product like cookie dough. They wanted to if they were Pizza Polla, they wanted to use their ovens for pizza uh, or if they're a subshop, they wanted to use their ovens for subs. So what we did is we gave them a free convection of it, and that added that added value immediately to the cookie Doo product and made it total difference, uh in my ability to get into doors. And so by simply adding that value. And so today I just wanted to give some examples for roofing companies. I happen to pick roofing companies because they're kind of in the same boat. They're very, very competitive, and because of that, they're always negotiating lower prices.

2:44 You know, it's it's I don't know what what it is, where they've conditioned the consumer to never accept the first volley you know, the first estimate because they've done a great job of conditioning and scaring the heck out of business owners in the roofing industry virtue of always asking or getting a competitive bid that's the lower price and just being price shoppers, which you know, it just doesn't work in business today. And uh, by the way, price shoppers are the most difficult customers to deal with anyway. But anyway, yeah, so here but here it is. So some of the things that a roofing company could say is that, you know that that would show that they add more value to the to the product, or show that their product has more value. Is things like, you know, a lot of roofing companies take your you know, take your insurance money and disappear, and so basically, especially in an insurance situation, so one a roofing company could say that we don't take a single dollar until you see materials on your roof, and you keep half uh of the of the of the value of the job until the job is done, right, So something like that adds more value. The other thing is we guarantee your final price before we touch your roof, no surprises, no add ons,

4:16 and no we found that another problem fee. So that's saying something like that starts to resonate with the customer because they're looking at it where you know that the estimate could change, you know, because oh, we found another problem, but this company is guaranteeing that if they find another problem, that's tough luck on the on the roofing company. And so just another example. People people never they promised a certain date and they don't deliver, They don't come to do the work on that date. And what the roofing company could say is we complete your roof on the scheduled day, or you don't pay full price period. And so that's another thing that reinforces the value that you deliver.

5:09 Customers are worried that the crew installing their roof got hired last week, and so what the business owner can say, as long as they have these type of workers. Every installer in your job has at least five plus years of certified experience. We verify their background before they even step on your property. And so that's another area that they add value. Now, this is a very competitive business, keep in mind, but these are things that you can say that will add value to the customer. Get the customer away from price. Tide of roofers who never return calls, Well, your dedicated project manager returns every call within two hours or your next service call is free. So that's another another added value. Worried about your landscaping, driveway and windows surviving your roofshop, We photograph your property before and after and fix any damage that we cause at no cost to you guarantee. How do you know how do you know they're not using How do you know that roofing company is not using cheap shingles and pocketing the difference? Well, at our roofing company, we show you exactly what goes on your roof before installation. UH manufacturer direct, full transparency, no substitutions. So these are these are things that you can do. You can say or you can message to

6:39 the customer or actually say it in your sales presentation. That adds more value and gets the customer away from the uh the the transaction. Yeah, yeah, and into the transformation. I think a lot of times people focus on price only because you haven't presented any value to them yet, and so that's the only thing they can go by. That's exactly right, and that's and and so we keep reinforcing. You know, one of the one of the clients, A couple of the clients we have are in the roofing industry and it's a very competitive. But I'm it's very hard to get the business owner not thinking about price, you know, and and dropping their price and how much, because sometimes it's endless. You know, they're dropping their price, but and they're looking at the gross profit. Here's something that they get that can trick them. They look at the gross profit dollars that they'll get on a job.

7:42 If the job is fifteen thousand dollars, they might get three or four thousand dollars of gross profit at the bending over and on the price. They'll say to themselves, that's three or four thousand dollars that I could use. It's just not the way to look at it, you know. It's just not you know, because if you look at if you do those jobs in high quantity, you're not going to cover your overhead. And that's what's happening with a lot of these roofing companies. Their margins have then to begin with. Yet they're bending over just to get the jobs. And that can't that can't happen. And that's just roofing. There are other industries. Look the frozen cookie though business. There were four thousand competitors doing the exact same thing. There was only one way to differentiate. And it opened so many doors, and I even lost money on the on the opening order. But I understood. I believed in my product, and I understood in the long term value.

8:40 That's and that's the bottom line too. With anything you're gonna buy is it's not what it costs, it's what the value of it is, you know, right. But but but the mindset of the business owner, and this is why mindset is so important in business. The mindset of the business owner is they're putting themselves in the position of the customer, and they're using either their wallet or a lower end wallet, and they're saying, oh, they probably can't afford it, let me give them a break. That kind of thing. It just doesn't work a long term. It's just a disaster strategy. When I train salespeople, one of the things I train them on is exactly that. Because of the fact that you know, listen, I mean, sales is a transfer of emotion.

9:34 I don't think any salesperson should get in the mindset and they do all the time what they would do if they were the customer, because not everybody's the same, you know. So if you go in with that attitude you're, like you were just describing, you're going to have an issue. That's number one. Number two is the fact that you know, basically you have to find out what's valuable to those prospects and provide that value to them. And that value doesn't necessarily and most of the time doesn't just mean price, like you said, incentives something that gets them to act. Listen, I've bought stuff before just because it's something stupid, like oh, you're giving me this, you know, like if I get I'll give you a perfect example. There's one restaurant on their dinary wards. Every time you don't come for a while, they send you ten dollars okay, you know, to use.

10:40 So of course I'm constantly going back to the place because they keep giving me ten dollars. What I'm not thinking about is the fact that I'm spending more than I would other places. Even though I'm getting that ten dollars, I just think of, oh, I'm not gonna and I do think of it as I'm not gonna were away of free ten dollars or giving me a free ten dollars, Why am I going to throw it away? And then sometimes when I don't take advantage of it, I'm smart enough to realize, oh, well, I just spent ten dollars on my dinner at home opposed to spending fifty dollars to get ten dollars off. Wow, incredible. Yeah, that's technology right, and that when you add more value, it gets the customer away from thinking about price and more. In the situations that I described, they might have heard, you know, stories about people, you know, people not showing the contract, is showing up late. Most most people understand that. They might have heard stories about when their insurance claims they take you know, one hundred percent of their money up front and then they just sit on it and you know, do the job like six six, seven weeks later. All of those things, all of those horror stories get you away from the transaction and into you know, understanding the real value that's being.

12:04 Offered totally, And how did I reach out to you to find out your real value? Okay, well, then go to next step CFO dot net. You can download a free copy of our book called Powerful Business strategies we also do. We also update our book by providing book interviews. So go to the next step CFO dot net forward slash contact love to interview business owners for the next edition of my book. And the quick pro quo quote is is that you've learned strategies that your competition isn't doing. Go to next step CFO dot net forward slash Contact, fill out the contact form and in the message section write the words book interview and I'll send you a calendar link.

12:50 Nice. Well, thanks again for some amazing advice for our businesses out there, and thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Men. Thanks for having Megain. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Patement on w for c u I Radio