Where Is Your Greatest Value Hiding?
Bob Sherlock
Partner & CMO | VisibleValue? Messaging | Forge the Future | Market Strategy | Differentiation Marketing | Pricing
Why do so many B2B manufacturers, distributors, and value-added re-sellers fail to spot the biggest value they provide to customers?
I believe it’s because when they look at their businesses, there’s a focal point that’s so powerful that their attention is irresistibly drawn there. So they miss something else that’s crucial to their survival and growth.
To illustrate what I mean, consider this photograph of lions in the grass:
If you’re like me, your attention was drawn to the lower right quarter of the picture where you see two lions. Can you see the third lion in the picture?
I couldn’t spot it, until I got a little help:
(Credit for the picture to John Mauldin and Rob Arnott, who took the photo in Tanzania. John writes Thoughts From the Frontline, a valuable yet free newsletter on macroeconomics and investing.) https://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/the-lions-in-the-grass-revisited
For companies that manufacture, distribute, and resell products, product is like the two lions in the lower right.
Product is usually the over-dominant focal point in their business. (Understandably; so much of their internal attention MUST be devoted to conceiving, developing, producing, stocking and distributing their products.)
This means, though, that management’s attention may be drawn away from where they’re probably adding considerable value for their customers—the customized, expertise-based services they wrap around their products to create solutions.
If this is true for you, it can leave your greatest value hidden- and you may not even realize it. If your greatest value is hiding from even you, how likely is it that your value is clear to your prospects and customers?
And if you aren’t clear on your value, only by the happiest of unlikely accidents will your pricing compensate you for that value.
Click here to discover why over focus on product depresses sales and margins, and learn the 3 key things you can do to unhide your full value to increase both sales and margins.
Partner & CMO | VisibleValue? Messaging | Forge the Future | Market Strategy | Differentiation Marketing | Pricing
7 年Mike, that's an intriguing point. In addition to the qualitative aspects, outcomes that affect one of the eight forms of economic value can at least be estimated.
Words and Images Arranged in Stories
7 年That’s right on target with the underlying principle behind the Internet of Things. Measuring the success of a solution (as opposed to a product) will be an interesting challenge, there’s more of a qualitative element to it.