Heath Ride 40

Beverly Mitchell is a family business expert who helps businesses leverage their unique values and culture to drive sales and profit. In her podcast, she explores how values and culture can be used as a marketing asset internally and externally. She emphasizes that while products and services can be copied, a company's culture cannot. Mitchell's approach, called the Values to Profit framework, focuses on six key levers: values, leadership, culture, people, customers, and storytelling. In a recent masterclass, she discussed how to use values and culture to differentiate and drive sales growth. She outlined five steps in the customer pillar of her framework, including crystallizing cultural USP, scaling customer experience, accelerating growth with top customers, shifting from price to a values-led framework, and leveraging the total workforce. She offers a program to teach sales teams how to sell value. Hi, I'm Beverly Mitchell, the family business values and culture expert, and I'm leading the movement in family businesses, unlocking the potential to leverage their unique values and culture to drive sales, profit, attraction, retention, and productivity. Welcome to the latest episode of my Values to Profit podcast, a podcast for family business leaders. If you are a regular listener, then you will know that in each of my podcasts, I explore how you can turn your unique values and culture into a powerful marketing asset, both internally to attract, retain, and motivate your people, and externally to differentiate yourself in the eyes of your customers and potential customers and elevate your relationship away from discussions about price. And if you're sitting there wondering, should I bother investing my time in listening to this podcast? I want to remind you of one very simple but hugely powerful fact. Other companies can copy your products and services, but they cannot copy your unique culture. So why would you not want to be looking for every single opportunity to leverage that unique culture to help you to build a more successful business? I'm here to help you find those opportunities and turn them into tangible sales and profits. My unique approach is all centred around my Values to Profit framework methodology, which focuses on each of the six key levers which will help you to turn your family business values and culture into a driver for long term success. And just a quick reminder of those six key levers, which are firstly, values, the foundation of everything. Secondly, leadership, because for your values and culture to be a true differentiator, your leaders have to walk the talk. Culture, because your values are only words on the page until they're truly reflected in your everyday culture by everyone, everywhere. People, because those businesses who know how to make their values and culture truly resonate with and relevant to all of their people. They're the ones that are able to attract, retain and motivate the right people to drive success. Customers, because your unique values and culture have the potential to differentiate you from your competitors and drive massive sales and profit growth. But more of that in a minute. And finally, storytelling, because stories from your past and present, which embody your values and culture, are your proof that you don't just talk about values and culture, you actually deliver on it. But let's dive into the focus for today's podcast, customers. And specifically today, I want to hone in on some key points covered in my recent masterclass, Turning Values into Profit, Doubling Your Revenue in 2025. This 45-minute masterclass, which was delivered live, explored how you can turn your values and culture into a huge profitability lever. How to maximize the impact of your values and culture to differentiate yourself versus your competitors and drive increased sales growth. How to use your values and culture to develop closer customer partnerships based on mutual value. How a consistent values aligned customer experience opens the door to new sales and profit opportunities. And finally, how to use the five steps in the customer pillar of my values to profit framework to help you to double your revenue with targeted customers in 2025. Now, who wouldn't want some of that? If you want to watch the full masterclass, then I'll give you the details of how you can do that at the end of this podcast. But today, I want to focus on those five steps in the customer pillar of my values to profit framework, which will help you to leverage your values and culture to deliver sales and profit growth. So let's start. Step one, crystallize your cultural USP to leverage your profit. So what do I mean by that? Your values should be clearly communicated and understood. You might have your values written down on paper, but how much are they contributing to your daily culture? Why is it so important? You can't sell the benefits of your values and culture USP if you don't have clarity yourself. You have such a valuable asset just sitting there. But I see many companies focusing time and investment on areas such as new product development and long-term business plans, which of course aren't bad things to do. But they're doing that at the same time as they are ignoring an asset which is just sitting there that can provide them with a key differentiator and positively impact their business right now. And they're not fully using it. And that's their culture. So my question to you right now is, do you have total clarity on your values and culture unique selling points? And are you fully leveraging them to their maximum potential? Step two, scale using your differentiated customer experience. Everyone who impacts the customer experience needs to demonstrate your values and culture in a consistent way. And I'm not just talking about the obvious customer facing departments such as sales and customer service, but also the back office functions like the accounts department, operations, health and safety, environment and sustainability, all of which have a significant impact on the overall customer experience. A lack of consistency between all your departments will ruin your value promise and undermines all your other actions. I see many businesses talking about the customer experience, but they invariably view it as an externally focused thing, when in reality, it needs to be both internally and externally focused. Aligning the customer experience and the internal culture are crucial as a consistent customer experience drives loyalty, trust, and most importantly, increased sales. So let me ask you to consider, where is your value promise being undermined right now? Because of a lack of consistency between all departments who impact the customer experience. Step three, accelerate growth potential with your top 10 customers. In order to do this, you have to know how your most important customers and those customers who have the greatest potential for future growth, experience your values and culture. Now you might be listening to this podcast and thinking, but we already know this, and I'm going to say, do you? Do you really? Some of your most important customers might have been with you for many years, but I'm going to be a bit controversial here and say that that is where the danger lies, as after this period of time, we can start to make assumptions. And there comes a point in a relationship with a customer when it becomes more difficult to ask certain questions, because we feel like we should already know the answers. I can pretty much guarantee you that there will be things about these customers that you don't know. And crucially, one of those things will be how they would describe how they experience your values and culture, and vitally, what that means for them in terms of the value it brings to their business. This is so important though, because it enables you to identify your biggest opportunities for sales and profit growth. The ability to connect with people and build trust quickly is one of my areas of genius, along with knowing the right questions to ask and when to ask them. And I use that to help my clients better understand their customers' perceptions of their values and culture, which then leads to identifying new opportunities for business growth. Let me give you an example of how this worked in practice with one of my UK-based family business clients. They hired Beverley Mitchell Consulting because they wanted to reduce their dependency on their top three customers, and because they were coming under increasing pressure from procurement departments focused on price. And they believed that there was an opportunity to use their strong values and culture more to help them in this area. They received my signature programme, which includes working with me on all of these five steps, and step three was a real game changer for them. As a direct result of the interviews I did with their top ten customers using my experience to value methodology, their customers began to join the dots between how they experienced my clients' values and culture and what that meant for them in terms of the value, in terms of hard cash, that those values and culture brought to their business. This has resulted in a powerful shift in those key customer relationships and discussions about longer-term, more strategic partnerships. And already, as a direct result of my unique methodology, it has resulted in a major new business opportunity to double the revenue in 2025 and catapult one customer into being one of the most exciting growth opportunities for the coming year, with an estimated revenue of over £1 million, and thus achieving my client's aim of reducing their dependency on their top three customers. So let me ask you, are you getting results like this from your customers by leveraging your unique values and culture in this way, or are you leaving opportunities on the table right now? Step four, shifting from price to a values-led framework. Once your customers start to join the dots between your unique values and culture and the monetary value that can bring to them, you need to have a sales, business development, commercial team, whatever you wish to call them, who have the necessary skills and knowledge to identify the real needs of the customer and connect these to your unique values and culture offer. Without these skills, you can't convert your values and culture into sales and profit. And the impact that this will have on your business? Well, when you can quantify your value and link that to what your customers really want and need, then your customers will be willing to pay for it. And these are the skills that I teach in my values to value programme. So let me ask you, do your sales teams understand how to sell value? And are they doing it right now? And finally, step five, leveraging total workforce impact. Being successful in leveraging your values and culture to drive sales and profit isn't just about investing in your sales team. Remember in step two, we looked at the importance of everyone who impacts the customer experience, demonstrating your values and culture in a consistent way. Well, step five is all about everyone who impacts the customer experience, understanding the connection between your values and culture and the value that brings for your customers. And vitally, they need to understand the impact of their actions, both positive and negative, on your ability to deliver that value. A consistently strong delivery of values and culture will enhance your ability to charge for the value you deliver, increase customer retention and ensure your differentiation from the competition. Let me give you an example of how this was done brilliantly by one of my global family business clients. They hired me because they wanted to introduce a more customer focused culture which was aligned to their values. But at that stage, they had no consistent understanding of what more customer focused actually meant. And they wanted my help to align their whole organisation, not just sales, around customer focus to drive their sales and increase their profit. Now they received a totally bespoke programme from me, which although it included the five steps of the customer pillar, included lots of additional interventions to meet their specific needs, such as involving all the key stakeholders to create a consistent definition of customer focus. Included in that bespoke programme was my values to value programme, which involved all departments who had any impact on the customer experience, from sales and customer service to marketing, operations, health and safety, supply chain, environment and sustainability and finance. The result of leveraging this total workforce impact approach was millions of pounds of extra revenue and profit over the next three years. It also enabled them to acquire new customers who were much more aligned to their values and culture and who recognised the value that brought and most importantly were willing to pay for that value. Now three years down the line, they have a much stronger business with everyone pulling in the same direction and have a much more differentiated offering versus their competitors. So as we conclude this fifth and final step in the customer pillar, I'd like to ask you, does everyone who influences your customer experience understand the value of your values and culture and their role in delivering that value? So there you have it, the five steps in the customer pillar of my value to profit framework, which will help you to leverage your values and culture to deliver sales and profit growth. Just a reminder, step one, crystallise your cultural USP to leverage your profit. Step two, scale using your differentiated customer experience. Step three, accelerate growth potential with your top 10 customers. Step four, shifting from price to a values led framework and step five, leveraging total workforce impact. If you want to get the full experience of this 45 minute masterclass, which was delivered live on Zoom, you can find details of how to download it on the Beverley Mitchell Consulting LinkedIn page or via my website. If you're ready to make the move and activate your family business's potential to leverage your values and culture to drive sales and profit growth, you can contact me directly or book into my calendar to arrange an exploratory call. But don't delay, as I only work with a small number of clients at any one time so that I can guarantee them my 100% attention. If you've enjoyed today's podcast and want to ensure that you don't miss any future episodes, then subscribe now and don't forget to recommend it to any other family business leaders who you think might be interested. Thanks so much for listening today and I look forward to you joining me again next time on the Values to Profit podcast.