This is Part III of a five-part series about the value lifecycle in B2B selling and marketing. This post examines Phase 2 of the Value Lifecycle: Demand Generation.
Last week we talked about value as it relates to pricing. In Phase 2 of the Value Lifecycle, our understanding of value shifts slightly.
This is Part II of a five-part series about the value lifecycle in B2B selling and marketing. This installment explores how to establish the value of your offering.
It’s that time of year again. The media is filled with year-end lists, projections, resolutions and wishes. Compared to all that drama, my wish for 2015 is simple: let’s have this be the year that puts an end to cost-based pricing.
For more than ten years, we have been preaching the evils of pricing based on costs. We truly believe its only place is in government contracts that require cost transparency and a margin or ‘fee’ on top of those acceptable costs.
For much of his tenure at GE, Jack Welch’s famous mandate to every business unit was to be either number one or number two in their market. If you weren't meeting that standard, you were replaced.
A good business strategy helps you differentiate yourself in the market. When I work with clients on strategy, I help them figure out their sweet spot. A sweet spot is the intersection of two things:
Have you ever had déjà vu during a meeting while discussing an idea that you’re certain was dismissed last year, or the year before that? Yet here it is, still being discussed and maybe even invested in. Like the zombies in a bad horror movie, these ideas just keep coming back, undead, to hunt you down.
All too often when working with clients, I hear the question asked, “What’s the size of the market?” That’s a question that analyst firms love to hear because they can sell the answer to whomever is asking the question. However, proper market sizing goes much deeper than what a typical analyst firm can answer, and is much more about relative size than precision. A project team that I was working with a while back gave a presentation to their Executive VP about investing in a new opportunity. The company was not currently in this particular market and the team was asking for investment dollars to go after a market that they estimated to be between $5 billion and $6 billion. The executive asked the team “Well, which is it?” The bewildered team asked, “Which is what?” The executive replied, “Is it $5 billion or $6 billion?” The team replied, “We don’t know precisely, but we are confident that it is in that range.” At which time the executive sent the team away to do more research because, as she said: “If you don’t know the market better than that, we shouldn't be investing.”
I've worked with many clients to help them craft value propositions. One mistake they often make is to mistake quality for value.
If you have $1M to invest, in which of the following two opportunities would you invest?
