Customer Centered Value Propositions

The Development of Customer Centered Value Propositions

Most people are not very interested in carburetors. They don’t capture the imagination, they are not particularly attractive, and for most of us not fascinated by automobile engines, the rank very low on the list of things to think about. We would have difficulty evaluating one carburetor over another in terms of rated performance, and many of us are somewhat uncertain as to what it actually does.

And yet, if you told me that my car would not run, and that I wouldn’t be able to get to work without one, or that a malfunctioning carburetor would cost me hundreds in extra gas and car repair bills, I would suddenly be a lot more interested. I could now perceive carburetor performance in terms of something that was important to me: the ability to get places in my car. I would have a context for valuing an otherwise uninteresting piece of equipment.

Companies are a lot like cars in that many products and services contribute to their functioning well. They are also like cars in that most people who operate them don’t understand all the mechanical details of how they work. There are any number of products and services that could contribute to companies being more efficient, more profitable, or better able to fulfill their goals. But most company decision-makers aren’t going to have the time the interest, or the technical breadth and depth to understand the implications of all of these products and services. Why choose one “carburetor” over another? And what happens when a new product comes along that doesn’t replace any current function, exactly, but enhances the performance of the whole?

Strangely, many sellers do very little to make the evaluations easier for their buyers. They market and sell their “carburetors” in a product-centered way, extolling performance attributes as if they were ends in themselves. They assume customers will be perceptive enough to understand both the differentiating advantages and the business implications of these attributes. But how many really are?
What can be assumed in all cases is that decision-makers want their companies, their departments, their processes to run better. They want to solve their critical problems, fulfill their goals, and meet the objectives on which their compensation is based. And ultimately, the only consistently reliable way to market and sell products is one that forges a link between these customer values and the product’s capabilities.