Your company exists to create value for your customers. Many roles inside your company are directly responsible for creating, communicating, and capturing value. These are people who have Direct Customer Impact. The actions they take have a direct impact on the amount of value your customers perceive from your products.
Game theory tells us to look ahead and reason backward. If we look ahead to the end of our game of business, we want more people to buy more at higher prices. How do we do that? That only happens when buyers perceive more value. The more value a buyer perceives, the more likely they are to buy and the more they are willing to pay.
So, stepping backward, we need buyers to perceive more value. How do we do that? The next backward step is to make sure salespeople know how to work one-on-one with buyers so each buyer can discover how much value to expect. The salesperson has a direct impact on how much value a customer perceives. How do we help salespeople sell more value?
Taking another step backward, marketing must create the tools for salespeople to use that helps them sell value. These could include value tables, ROI calculators, and case studies. Marketing must also target their campaigns to the types of buyer who get the most value from the product. In other words, fill the funnel with buyers who have bigger problems. Marketing has a direct impact on how much value a customer perceives. How can we help marketing communicate more value?
Take another step backward. Product management and development must create products that buyers value. They should be building products that have no competition or are at least highly differentiated. They should be thinking of a good, better, best product portfolio. Their efforts directly impact how much value a customer receives.
Many roles have this direct customer impact. But the question left unanswered is, “what is value?” This is a very hard question we will discuss in future blogs. The key takeaway here though is that if you are in product management, marketing, or sales and you don’t know what value is, you have some room to grow. I can’t wait for you to get better at your role.
