Printed Circuit Design & Fab - November 2007 - (Page 14)

Exceeding Expectations To exceed customer expectations, understand your customers’ values and focus on customers who share a common vision. ONE OF THOSE things that I grapple with the most is trying to define value add. My banker and accountant always pepper their conversations with pithy references to my needing to focus more on the value add my company – and industry – provide. Equally, when with customers, the latest term they use PETER along the death-march of becoming an BIGELOW “approved” supplier is to ask what my company’s’ “value proposition,” aka value add, is. While I have no problem dealing with the question when put on the spot to respond, I still walk away and grapple with what does value add really mean. I think we all are in the same boat when it comes to adding value. No matter how much we know we add value, it is difficult to quantify and communicate what value really means. Worse yet, our customers want value. However, they rarely define what THEY think value is, and, of course, no one wants to pay extra for value. When I think of value, two images come to mind. The first is to receive something – tangible or not – that really helps me. In my mind’s eye, this includes sage advice, a helpful hand when in a problematic situation or something of tremendous lasting significance. The second image of value I get is about expectations. Someone can pleasantly surprise me or some company exceeds my expectations when I purchase a basic item and that brings value. A good example is the restaurant that costs no more than any other place but provides over the top service and the best food. The tricky part is that in any business, what I think is value may not be what my customer considers value to be. This reality hit home for me a couple of years ago when I was visiting a major defense company. I was scheduled to make a series of presentations to several different divisions – all with impressive, very military sounding names – throughout a large corporate campus. In my first meeting, I focused on my company being MIL certified. The first question/comment was that they only wanted to talk about specific issues related to MIL-31032, to which I responded and made a mental note to incorporate that into my next presentation. In the second presentation, I made sure to better cover my company’s MIL certification status. The first question/comment revolved around specialty manufacturing processes not related to any specific MIL qualification. Again, I made a mental note to modify my presentation to include these points that appeared to provide value to this company. My next presentation included all of these points, which made it longer and more in-depth. About half way through, one guy stood up and said he could care less 14 about our MIL status or special processes; that everything they buy is built to commercial standards, not MIL standards! One company, three divisions, all viewing value radically differently than the other! So, every customer defines value differently. Some want specific tech support while some measure value as being on-time delivery and quality, and others just look at price. The challenge for us all is to be able to comfortably define what our value “sweet spot” is so we can best focus on those customers who share our vision of value. By comfortable, that means you have to both believe that you have hit the proverbial nail-on-the-head and then be able to communicate it so that everyone understands. This brings me back to why I grapple so much about defining value add. What will enable me to charge a premium for my product? What will convince a company to start buying from my company? How can I ensure that customers will think of my company first when they have need for my product? What I do know is that I can’t get away with offering long lead times, poor on-time delivery, lousy service and inflated prices; the market will not tolerate that. I also know that what may work for a competitor – whether across town or across the globe – will not necessarily work for me. And this always brings me back to the same place: the need to spend quality time with my customers asking them what they are looking for in a supplier and, not quite so brazenly put, what do they need that they are not currently getting and would make them willing to pay more to one supplier over another. The bottom line is if there is anything that will make a customer willing to pay a premium – as slight as it may be – or explicitly show loyalty to a supplier – that’s the true definition of value! My experience has been that the way customers define value is often much simpler than most of us would want to believe – and much easier for each of us to provide than we could imagine. That extra call to follow-up on a question, the thank-you note for a big order and making that extra effort when the customer asks for a favor, all mean a lot more than continually stressing even the most impressive capability or the latest technical white paper your company may have. Most important is asking your customers what they value and then focusing on providing that value add better than anyone else! As we head down the final stretch of 2007, everyone should spend a few minutes trying to define or redefine what value add really means to our customers and then incorporate that definition into our business plans for the upcoming new year. PCD&F PETER BIGELOW is president and CEO of IMI (imipcb.com). He can be reached at pbigelow@imipcb.com. NOVEMBER 2007 PRINTED CIRCUIT DESIGN & FAB http://imipcb.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Printed Circuit Design & Fab - November 2007

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - November 2007 Contents Our Line Market Watch Around the World Happenings ROI Packaging HDI Design and Fab Plating Design Tools Metric Design Productronica Product Preview Marketplace Ad Index The Signal Doctor

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - November 2007

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