A writer posed a general question of the role of value-adding services in B-to-B markets, particularly in an industrial context. While there are, of course, service components intrinsic to every sales transaction, sellers often use additional services to make their offering more attractive. There are many possibilities for value adding services that most customers would be happy to accept, for example:
– services related to a specific order or customer relationship: payment or delivery terms, custom packaging, warehousing, partial shipments, consignment, etc
– technical services: analytical lab service, applications design assistance, facilities engineering help, etc
– market development assistance: joint application development, market research about your customer’s customer, co-funding of advertising, trade show, etc
– business support: health/safety/environmental expertise, HR expertise, etc.
Services such as these are expensive, however, and the provider must carefully assess the cost / benefit implications by addressing three fundamental issues:
1. Which services are most interesting and valuable to particular customer segments and which are less relevant?
2. What is the actual Dollar value of the additional service to each customer segment?
3. How can you capture that added value from your customer – as a premium price, as an additional invoicable event, or as some other contract obligation?
There are good, workable answers to these questions, but finding and confirming them will typically require careful, intense evaluation of each particular case. This sort of investigation would include in-depth conversations with many people in the customer / end user space, a healthy dose of competitor analysis, some detailed economic assessments, all leavened with business judement and a touch of practical psychology.
Engaging an independent consultant is often the best way to address a large, one-of-a-kind task like this.
