We define an abstract notion of subdifferential operator and an associated notion of smoothness of a norm covering all the standard situations. In particular, a norm is smooth for the Gâteaux (Fréchet, Hadamard, Lipschitz-smooth) subdifferential if it is Gâteaux (Fréchet, Hadamard, Lipschitz) smooth in the classical sense, while on the other hand any norm is smooth for the Clarke-Rockafellar subdifferential. We then show that lower semicontinuous functions on a Banach space satisfy an Approximate Mean Value Inequality with respect to any subdifferential for which the norm is smooth, thus providing a new insight on the connection between the smoothness of norms and the subdifferentiability properties of functions. The proof relies on an adaptation of the ''smooth'' variational principle of Borwein-Preiss. Along the same vein, we derive subdifferential criteria for coercivity, Lipschitz behavior, cone-monotonicity, quasiconvexity, and convexity of lower semicontinuous functions which clarify, unify and extend many existing results for specific subdifferentials.