ABSTRACT
Customers may indeed be aware of a few select things the salesperson recently did for them, but those memories fade quickly. When customers perceive equality between two suppliers, it is easy for them to default to the one that offers lower pricing. A recent example better illustrates how a lack of real documented value creates parity among suppliers. A longtime supplier of components and assemblies to support production requirements has been providing products and services to a customer for several years. Exceptional responsiveness, attention to detail, and routinely high degrees of service and support enabled the supplier to develop incomparable personal relationships with key decision makers. The supplier subsequently invested many additional hours revising the presentation to include several specific examples of their services and resulting value. A proactive documentation approach does indeed take time to implement and manage, but it takes far less time than reactively responding to customer or competitive pressures.
