• Those who continued to pay us. They were asked about the value they acquired from receiving our services;

• Those who had been paying us for some time and then stopped. They were asked about what they expected to receive, but did not receive, or about what we needed to improve in our products.

Once I analyzed the survey results, I came to the conclusion that the only real value for our clients was in implementing management tools in their enterprises. That study was the impetus that led to the founding of "Visotsky Consulting”.

Such a survey can be done in any business. Of course, you will need to customize the questions for the particular business. For example, in a store, I would ask the buyers why they chose this store for their purchases, and in what circumstances and why would they choose to buy at other stores. It makes sense to ask these questions for businesses where competitors have similar products. If the service is unique, such as a singing coach, one would ask what the clients liked and disliked the most about your services. You will find that people, especially those with positive attitudes, do not like to talk about the negative aspects of things. In order to ferret out this information, you have to resort to various tricks. In such cases, I say that my job is to improve the company’s performance, and that they would be helping me out if they were to tell me what we should improve in our product.

It requires a certain amount of courage to conduct these kinds of surveys. An executive who loves his job is unlikely to be pleased when he discovers some of the shortcomings in his product. Does anyone enjoy it when somebody bursts their bubble? But if we don't understand what is valuable about our product, how can we effectively reproduce it? Just look at it this way, every shortcoming detected by the survey is a new opportunity to improve the company. If your company is already successfully providing the valuable product to its customers, any increase in the value of this product can bring you a considerable increase in income.

If your company or division has several completely different types of customers or products, you will have to conduct multiple surveys. For example, you sell electric tools both wholesale and through your own retail stores. Essentially, you have two different products. In this case, these two different VFPs will provide two different types of clients, one type for each product. The easiest way to survey the retail customers is in a store. As far as the wholesalers, you will most likely have to survey them by phone.

Here’s one of the secrets to successfully conducting surveys on the product’s value – do not give clients a survey to fill out. In this case, a written survey will not yield usable responses and is a waste of time and money. For a survey with usable answers, you need personal contact. And since this survey regards the company’s product that you are personally responsible for, I recommend that you do it yourself. This may sound strange, but my experience shows that when such a survey is done by employees, they miss very important details and the survey loses some of its value. The good news is that you do not need to survey hundreds of clients. From experience, it is sufficient to survey just a dozen or two. If you ask the correct questions and elicit honest answers, you will find that the responses are very similar. Another advantage of doing the survey yourself, is that the clients respond much more readily and openly to the head of the company, which greatly speeds up the process.

So, write the questions for your survey. Then head to the sales department and get a list of customers who: have recently bought something and those who stopped buying. Or you can simply go down to the retail sales space or office to take action. You are in for an adventure! Most likely, you will learn something new about your own VFP, and you will get a much clearer and precise picture of it. Then you will be able to tell the staff about the results of your study. When you convey to them exactly what the company or division’s VFP is, you will find that that one action improves performance.

I often see phrases such as, “a satisfied customer", "high-quality service", or "a customer who comes again and brings friends” in the wording of a company product. However, this phrasing doesn’t convey the product’s value, they only declare the intention to do a job well. When customers order services or buy products, they expect a specific thing. Ask yourself, when you go to the dentist, what do you want to get for your money? In any business, we strive to satisfy our customer. The value of that is obvious – customer satisfaction strengthens the company's image and helps ease our work. But the customer doesn’t pay for happiness, he pays for a specific value. The dentist gives us beautiful and healthy teeth, plus a comfortable treatment with long-lasting results. We don't pay him simply because we are “satisfied and will come back to him."

Another dangerous term in product wordings is "high-quality". It should only be used when an industry has particular standards that are generally known and understood. Otherwise the customer’s understanding of "high-quality" can be completely different from the employee’s understanding.

When I was consulting printing companies, I found that the company and its customers had different ideas on what was considered "high-quality printing". These differences created a lot of problems when orders were delivered to customers. When the VFP of the company was worked out and phrased as, “printing jobs performed on time and in accordance with ISO standards” [7], and helpful references were added to all customer handouts, a clear understanding between the company and customer was achieved. To determine whether the printed product conformed to the international standards, one just had to perform a few simple measurements – such as determining the variance of halftone in printing. Only you can determine what is acceptable and what is not acceptable for your business. In our consulting projects, I ask executives questions that guide them to defining what is an acceptable product and what is not. If it’s a retail company, then what selection of goods should it have? What is the acceptable delivery or processing time? Would you consider a partially completed order to be a final product? What technical standards will allow you to determine whether you have succeeded in producing the product? What orders will be rejected on the basis that our technology can’t provide a high-quality product?

To understand the company’s product, it is also important to understand what it is not. If McDonald's tried to please a different kind of customer and add menu items for them, they would end up losing the speed and efficiency they’re known for – and quickly start losing customers. You don't like the food from McDonald's? You are just not their customer. Their VFP is meant for another type of customer, and millions currently go to McDonald’s because they’re happy with it.

There are no absolute good or bad products. When one buys $20 sneakers from Walmart, they don’t expect them to withstand the same wear and tear, nor be a comfortable, as a new $100 Nike pair. Yet, both sell well and are in demand by different types of customers – each model makes their respective customers happy. It may be that Walmart sells more of their sneakers than Nike. Simple sneakers from Walmart is one VFP, Nike shoes is another one. It is important to understand what exact product we provide for our customers, and what we don’t.

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