How To Create Value In A Business

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

You're reading Entrepreneur United States, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

There are seven secrets to add value in your job and in the world around you. Any one of these ideas or concepts can be sufficient for you to become financially successful. When you begin to combine these ideas together, you'll begin to move ahead more rapidly in your financial life than you ever have before.

Getty Images | PeopleImages.com

1. The Faster The Better

The first way to increase value is simply to increase the speed you deliver the kind of value people are willing to pay for.

Successful people know everybody is impatient. A person who didn't realize that they wanted your product or service until today, now wants it yesterday. People perceive a direct correlation between speed and the value of your offering.

A person who can do it for you fast is considered to be a better and competent person offering a higher level of quality than a person who does it slowly, or whenever they get around to it.

2. Offer Better Quality

The second key to creating wealth is by offering better quality than your competitors at the same price.

And remember, quality is whatever the customer says it is. Total quality management can best be defined as: "Finding out what your customer wants and giving it to him or her faster than your competitors."

Quality does not just mean greater durability or excellence in design. Quality refers, first of all, to utility, to the use that the customer needs to put the product or service. It is the customer's specific need, or the benefit that the customer seeks, that defines quality in his or her mind.

3. Add Value

The third way that you can become wealthy is by looking for ways to add value to everything you do.

Remember, if everyone is offering the same thing, these factors of the product or service become the basic minimum, or the expected norm in the market.

If you want to stand out as a person or as a producer, you have to "plus" whatever you are doing so that your customer perceives you and your offering as being superior to that of your competitors.

You can add value to a product or service by improving the packaging or the design. You can increase its value by simplifying its method of use.

Apple transformed the entire world of computers by making them easy to use for the unsophisticated person.

Simplicity became an enormous source of added value for Apple, and for countless other companies that have followed the same route.

4. Increase Convenience

The fourth way of increasing wealth is by increasing the convenience of purchasing and using your product or service.

Fast food stores by the thousands are a simple example of how much more people are willing to pay for convenience than they are if they have to drive across town to a major shopping center or a major grocery store.

5. Improve Customer Service

A fifth way of creating value and increasing wealth is by improving customer service. People are predominantly emotional.

They are greatly impacted by the warmth, friendliness, cheerfulness and helpfulness of customer service representatives. Many companies are using customer service as a primary source of competitive advantage in a fast changing marketplace.

6. Changing Lifestyles

The sixth key to creating wealth is changing life styles, and the impact they are having on customer purchasing patterns and behaviors throughout the country.

There is a national trend toward cocooning, or staying at home more and to making the home environment more enjoyable. People's tastes are very different from the tastes of people a generation ago.

More people want to travel and take vacations, thereby creating a boom in the travel, leisure, resort and cruise industries.

Changing lifestyles and demographics can create opportunities that will enable you to offer a product or service to a clearly identifiable market that can make you wealthy in a short period of time.

7. Offer Planned Discounts

The seventh key to creating to wealth is just planned discounting. This involves finding ways to sell higher and higher volumes of products and services to more and more people at lower and lower prices.

You've heard it said that, "If you want to dine with the classes, you have to sell to the masses."

How could you offer a product or service of good value at an even lower price? How could you squeeze out the costs of getting that product or service to the customer and pass the savings onto him or her?

When you begin thinking of increasing the speed at which you deliver your product or service, improving the quality, add value at every stage of production, increasing the convenience for your customers, giving better customer service, catering to changing lifestyles and trends and finding ways to reduce the actual cost, you will be astonished at the incredible number of ideas and possibilities that exist around you.

And remember, one idea of insight for benefiting customers in a way that no one is currently offering can be the springboard that launches you into a life of financial success and achievement.

Looking to take the next step in your business and map out your path to success? Download my One-Hour Business Plan here.

Brian Tracy is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International, a company specializing in the training and development of individuals and organizations. He is the top selling author of over 70 books, includingEat That Frog, a New York Times Best Selling book. In addition, he has written and produced more than 500 audio and video learning programs, including the worldwide, best-sellingPsychology of Achievement, which has been translated into more than 28 languages.