You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
—Henry Ford

Be honest. Have you been at the end of a quarter needing to make your number and felt a strong urge to beg your customer for an order?

Have you been reading the secrets of value creation in this book and caught yourself thinking, “This author is whacko…Creating high value is too much work…My grandchildren will be inheriting the orders in my pipeline if I do all of that…I’m just going to close the order for whatever I can get and move on to the next one…Why do I care about high value, anyway?!”

The answer to both questions is: If you don’t deliver high value, you won’t get the order. Period.

Remember, whether it happens tomorrow, or next year, or the year after, your competition is going to be just a mouse click away for the customer. If you do not deliver high value, someone else will.

The way to build a solid, predictable order pipeline is to deliver high value. You will always have high value if you deliver change. Once you are aligned with the customer’s needs for change, the customer will be pushing you to deliver instead of you pushing him for the order. You will have a bookings backlog instead of a bookings pipeline.
 

Rather than using “push” tactics and thinking how to accelerate orders, you may get better results by using “pull” tactics and thinking how you can deliver more value.

I’m sure you have heard the expression, “You get what you pay for.” Set customers’ expectations for paying a fair price for what they receive.

Have you heard the expression, “You get what you deliver”? When you deliver high value, you get high revenue and profits. When you deliver low value, you get low revenue and profits.

Make your decision and then live by it: Do you want to be a beggar? Or do you want to be a change leader? While this may seem like an overdramatization and while both options involve certain hardships, these stark terms appropriately reflect undeniable trends: globalization of competition, Internet empowerment, and the most difficult and complicated economic environment since the Great Depression.

Focus on high value delivery. Let others beg for low value deals. Meet and exceed reciprocal expectations of fairness.