Beyond the price per word: about the value of language services

Summer & vacation period — a time for reflection. The Elia conference in Geneva with its focus on marketing and sales came at just the right time in our industry. Gemino’s Managing Director Christian Schwendy co-organized this event as the Elia vice president. It was a first in terms of its focus on marketing and sales in our business sector, but also with respect to its particular format. Many workshops saw participants intensely debate topics from the area of sales practice as well as scrutinize practices such as price structuring and needs assessment.

Taking center stage was also the question of how can we even better meet our requirements and cooperate even more effectively with our clients.

An important aspect here is the value that our service has for our clients. There was a nice quote on this topic from Richard Brooks, one of the event’s speakers:

“The value of our service does not arise from its delivery, but from its use.”

In real terms, this means that our localized version of a marketing brochure substantially contributes to the sales success in the target country. The value of our service is of strategic business importance for our clients because it has a direct impact on the positive experience of our clients’ customers.

We shape the way people in Brazil perceive, think and feel when they visit websites localized by us or read a manual that we translated.

Therefore, it is essential that our clients have confidence in our work. So we also carry a lot of responsibility. Ideally, we will partner with those responsible in the marketing, technical documentation or language service departments. We know our client’s processes and mindset. Therefore, we can efficiently adapt our processes to requirements and generate precisely the right content in a variety of languages. Just as our clients want and expect from us.

And we need to communicate the value of our service. Only when this is done successfully is our service — including from our clients’ perspective — much more than ‘just’ translation where only the price per word matters. And our clients are much more than ‘just’ customers. Then we are partners, together creating value for the company.

As Elia vice president and organizer, Christian Schwendy extends a warm welcome to delegates of Elia ND Focus Sales & Marketing