Marketing your value

by Paul Markgraff

Fictitious distributor Primo Industrial Supply currently has several customers it provides with value-added services. Now, Primo wants to bring in new customers, but sales and marketing manager Kevin Fitzpatrick is not sure how to market his value-added offerings to a wider audience.

There are no tricks to marketing value. It takes focus and persistence. But, by looking for customers close to home, promoting your company intelligently and consistently presenting your points of differentiation, distributors and manufacturers can expand their base of value-added customers.

Market your proximity
Distributors can capture more business from customers by continually upgrading value-added offerings. Marketing these offerings to customers close-at-hand gives distributors the chance to shine.

Regional distributors will find it easier to handle requests from OEM customers who are located near them. Make sure to let your customers know about your proximity to them. Distributors’ value-added services will be that much more valuable when they show up to address a problem face-to-face rather than over the phone.

“A value-add involves your ability to streamline the supply chain,” says William Moore, senior vice president, sales development and channel management, SKF Service Division. “As a regional distributor, you are more likely than a direct seller to offer small OEMs logistical services, including inventory management, warehousing, just-in-time delivery, shipment consolidation and repackaging.”

Say your name
End mill and abrasive distributor Atwood Industries spent nearly 20 years helping build its customers’ businesses, but focused less on building its own. Company president Ron Meisinger learned the hard way that distributors need to market themselves at every turn and promote their value-added services whenever possible.

“Two things I was after: telling people our culture and leaving that message behind,” says Meisinger. “Many times, we were not working alongside the decision maker. We would not even know who that was.”

Meisinger created a 12-page, two-color document called The Atwood Edge. He planned to keep the paragraphs short, remain on point and tell Atwood’s story to the prospective decision maker.

The value-added marketing piece contained four sections: Production Improvement Specialists, Streamlined Inventory Management, Simplified Purchasing Initiatives and Continuous Improvement Programs.

It was a roll of the dice, Meisinger says. And the Atwood Edge isn’t everything to everyone. Price buyers look at the brochure and toss it. But, buyers looking for quality tools, technical expertise, product knowledge and concrete value-added services snap it up because it gives them an edge over the competition.

Make a difference
John R. Graham, president of marketing services and sales consulting firm Graham Communications, says the key to getting inside a customer’s head is by differentiating yourself from your competition.

Manufacturers and distributors who practice adding value and documenting their successes have a point of differentiation far above the norm. This difference is extremely valuable to customers. Documentation provides customers with solid statistics on which to base important business decisions.

And, the purpose of differentiation is embracing what the customer values. That alone should drive everything the company does, including marketing. This means the distributor or manufacturer must reinforce their value at ever opportunity, in every conversation and in every marketing message.

“If we don’t bring to the party something that sets us apart from all the other parties the customer is invited to, the party is over,” says Graham.

Can you afford not to?
The way into the customer’s heart is through his understanding of value. What does the customer value most? Manufacturers and distributors must first understand the customer’s perception of value, even though it may be different for each customer. Marketing personnel need to first examine all the possibilities, then choose a strategy based on their perception of customer value.

Your marketing strategy must change from that which you can get from customers to that which you can give to customers. And then sing it from the mountaintops.

This article was prepared exclusively for ValueAddedPartners.org. Copyright 2005.

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