Customers want value, the thing is giving customers value means taking money out of your own pocket, right? Wrong!
In this article we’ll look at the misconceptions most business owners have around adding value, then we’ll give you three ways you could be adding a ton of extra value for your customers without spending a single penny.
The main misconceptions
When you think about adding value for customers it’s likely you’ll jump straight to thinking about some sort of discount. In fact, discounts rarely provide any kind of value to either you or the customer. For the customer there’s no real feeling of value in a discount, it just cheapens your business and could potentially send the wrong message of bribery over benefits.
Then there’s your pocket. Discounting prices, unless your prices have been carefully curated to handle discounts, just means that you’ll end up taking money out of your own pocket to honour the deal.
In that case you’d probably create a better feeling of value by standing with the customer and paying for part of their full priced bill yourself. That at least looks very generous, but doesn’t quite sit right in our business brains.
When we provide discounts we do at least one of the following things:
- Tell the customer we’re overpriced,
- Cheapen our offering,
- Bring in the wrong kinds of customers (people looking to save a buck or two),
- Create an expectation of discounts on services,
- Make it harder to increase prices in the future.
The list goes on. So how do we provide value without making any of the above happen, and without costing ourselves money?
Three ways to add value for FREE
When you want to add value it’s important to consider the pain points that customers might face when doing business with you. We’re not just talking about the ones they tell you about, as these generally don’t offer too much in the way of insight, but by putting yourself in their shoes you can come up with some innovative solutions that add massive value and cost absolutely nothing.
1. Make their wait comfortable.
When a customer drops their car off they might end up having to wait around when this happens you’ll get customers complaining that they’ve “had to take the day off work”, perhaps moan about having to get a taxi back home, generally being in the way, and needing some form of customer service. So, let’s take the complaint of having to take the day off work and pay for a taxi.
The simplest solution is to take a walk, no more than 5 minutes from your garage and find a nice independent coffee shop. Preferably one that’s open when you are, has WiFi for customers, and better yet offers food. Head inside and talk to the owner, they’ll be more than happy to partner up with your business, after all the promise of new customers who’ll be staying for at least an hour or so, having a coffee and a bite to eat is likely one that’ll be music to their ears.
For bonus points:
That’s right some bonus points here and it’ll make you look like a business genius too! When a customer lets you know they’ll be heading to the cafe, call the cafe to let them know the customers car is ready. This way the cafe can let the customer know and importantly, offer another drink before they leave or a to-go drink. Clearly it’s best to organise this with the cafe first…
2. Promote exclusive offers from local businesses
Another little bit of networking to be done here. Once a month head out into your local community and make them aware of your business, the types of customer you get in, and give other local businesses the chance to provide your while-you-wait customers with discounts and offers exclusive to you.
This is a great way to keep a customer occupied with some retail therapy for an hour or so while you service their vehicle and helps to support local businesses. It’s win-win.
3. Airport parking
This one is a little out there, requires a little planning, and space too, but could be a winner during school holidays.
Within your marketing offer “airport parking” with a service and MOT. This allows you to increase the price of a service to accommodate the slight hassle of having to store a car on site for a week or so.
What’s the benefit here? Well for people going on holiday they no longer need to worry about their car being with a dodgy airport parking firm and means when they get back from their holiday their car will be serviced and MOTd giving them one less thing to worry about when they get back and have to head back to the office.
