(Time to read this Blog is about 3.5 minutes)

Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:

1. My Biz Quote of the week:
   “Is your business living in the past?  If what you do, how you do it and where you do it have more to do with ‘history’ than with current realities and future possibilities, you’re well on your way to becoming irrelevant.”     
   …Donald Cooper.
    
2. Quick Biz Tip:
   When do you give raises?  
   1. All at the same time for everyone? This annual ‘festival of raises’ creates a frenzy of everybody trying to find out how much everyone else is being paid.  This wastes a lot of time and energy and usually ends in many people feeling disgruntled and resentful.   
   2. On the anniversary of their employment. This spreads out the workload, individualizes it to each employee and puts a stop to the ‘festival of raises’ frenzy described in item #1 above.   
   3. Whenever their performance deserves it, including when they’re given more responsibility.  This ties compensation more directly to performance and responsibility, which is the way it ought to be.
   4. Not unless they threaten to leave. This is often a sign of uncaring or incompetent management who run the business by jumping from crisis to crises.  It puts worthy employees in an awkward, frustrating position and encourages aggressive employees to blackmail you with ultimatums.  This is a terrible option.
       
      So, what’s your process for giving raises, rewarding excellent performance and encouraging those with potential?   I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic. 
       
3. Canada loses measles elimination status. For the first time in 27 years, Canada will no longer be considered measles-free by the Pan American Health Organization. Over 5,000 cases of measles have been reported across the country, with health experts pointing to declining vaccine rates as the main cause.  Alberta, which has been particularly hard hit, has seen its youth measles vaccine rate slip well below herd immunity.
    
4. Knowingly fraudulent. Social media giant, Meta, knowingly serves up 15 billion clearly fraudulent ads per day.  Meta’s own internal documents project that 10% of its annual revenue comes from these ads for scams and banned goods,
    
5. Fun fact: More than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week.
    
6. AI update: A Goldman Sachs study estimates that 44% of all legal work could eventually be replaced by AI.
    
7. I can be helpful. If your company, Industry Association or local Business Group has a Conference coming up in 2025, and you need an insightful, bottom-line management speaker who will inform, focus, challenge and inspire you, perhaps we should chat about possibilities.  I’m easy to find at donald@donaldcooper.com.

Now, to this week’s important topic:

The simple truth about ‘Value’… and how to deliver more of it:

Ultimately, customer ‘ownership’ is all about creating, delivering and communicating compelling value.   Value that ‘grabs’ your target customers, clearly differentiates you from your competitors, makes you ‘famous’ and grows your bottom line.  Customers demand value and every business promises it.  But there’s a huge lack of clarity about what ‘value’ really is.

Let’s keep it simple; there are only 3 kinds of Value…functional, emotional and financial Value.  That’s it!

1. We deliver Functional Value when we…
   • sell products and services that actually work for our target customers.
   • are open or available (physically or electronically) when they need us.
   • provide the information, coaching and encouragement they need to wisely choose and effectively use what we sell.
   • create policies & processes that make us easy, efficient and consistent to do business with.
   • do what we say we will…when we said we’d do it.
     …that’s Functional Value!
      
2. Next is Emotional Value.  Most business people struggle with this one.  They think it’s some airy-fairy thing that can’t be defined…and they’re dead wrong!
    
   Quite simply, we deliver Emotional Value when our customers feel better about themselves and the world every time they do business with us, and every time they use what they bought from us.  That’s it!  Are we uplifting, energizing and joyful? If we’re not delivering Emotional Value, we’re not really ‘connecting’ with our customers.  People will always remember how we made them feel.
    
3. Financial Value is #3.  Most businesses put it as #1, but it has to be #3, because it’s a function of the previous two.
    
   We deliver financial value when our customers believe that they paid a fair and competitive price for all of the functional and emotional value that they got from us.  If we don’t deliver functional and emotional value, there can be no Financial Value.

So, that’s it…there are three kinds of value.  The key question is, are you delivering the compelling combination of functional, emotional and financial value required to make you the clear and compelling ‘wise choice’ for your target customers?  If not, what needs fixing, doing or not doing to make that happen?  Specifically, what action will be taken, by whom, by when, at what cost, with what outcomes, measured how and rewarded how to deliver more functional, emotional and financial value?  

Note:  Much of my Biz Coaching work is helping clients create, deliver and effectively communicate compelling value that clearly differentiates them from their competitors and grows their bottom line.  If you’d like to chat about ‘possibilities’, I’m easy to find at donald@donaldcooper.com.

That’s it for this week…

Live brilliantly and be kind to each other!       

Donald Cooper 

Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability.  He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.