Value is in the Eye of the Beholder

Discerning value from something, especially when it comes to a purchase for your business, is not something that should be assumed. All too many times have I heard from sales people, the client won’t pay that much, or it’s too expensive for a company that size. I always fire back at them about value creation. What’s valuable to one client is different to another. Never assume that any client will not find enough value in a product just because its expensive.

In a recent battle with one such salesman, I presented a very compelling argument to illustrate this point. Pretty much all corporate environments provide coffee to their employees. Of course we’re no different other than the fact that as a CEO I ascribe a significant amount of value from the coffee we provide our people. To me having great coffee, fresh brewed and always readily available is as important as the phone. We lease a Starbucks coffee machine that grinds, brews, pours fresh coffee on the fly. It is serviced weekly and we get all the supplies, coffee, creamers we need, and if the unit breaks down, it gets serviced that day! Many CEO’s may say, sweet, how much is it. And when they hear the monthly cost, they veto it. But to me, it doesn’t matter. The value we get as a company from this machine is impossible to measure.

By the way, we spend nearly $1,300 per month on Coffee for 45 people. Is it worth it? To us it is. But if the sales person who sold us the service had assumed we wouldn’t pay that amount because of our company size, he would have lost a pretty sweet account. Get it?