Customer Value Creation
The Relationship Economy and the Order of the Million Elephants and the White Umbrella
The Relationship Economy In the emerging Relationship Economy well-facilitated, ongoing customer-supplier interactions have the power to reveal value for both parties, and, In the process, dissolve the instinct for a customer to make choices on the basis of competitive comparisons. In simple terms, customers have traditionally measured value as benefits / costs. In the Relationship Economy, they measure value as relevance / time (“Was this interaction time well spent?) ‘Relationship’ has, of course, always had a place in customer-supplier activities. But it has generally applied to upmarket customer-supplier activities – luxury (or, at least, expensive) goods and services – because, in the industrial age, it was generally true that customers could either have quantity or quality, but not b...
The Essential Secret of Effective Value Creation & Delivery
Value Creation: Customer, Employee and Stakeholder value Right now, there’s a buzz out there around the term Value Creation. But there’s also a lot of fuzz. Far too often, companies send out mixed messages about the focus of any Value Creation initiatives. Is the Customer the primary focus? Or the Shareholder? Or the Employee? Or all three? Sorting this quandary out is critical for any business that intends to stay vibrant and profitable. And, as we hope to convince you, it all comes down to a consideration of what happens at the Customer-Supplier interface. That’s where everything that you plan, everything that you produce, everything that you hope for meets the real world. It’s where your business wins or loses. And it’s where, hand on heart, the Value Genie team has world-leading insigh...
Customer Centricity: The ultimate Outside-In lesson for us all
Customer Centricity When companies talk about Customer Centricity it is often from an Inside-Out perspective. A “Look, there are our target customers – go get ‘em” approach, supported by a “Buy what we’ve got, now” marketing and sales stance. In truth, this is a parody of Customer Centricity. Genuine Customer Centricity only happens when an company organises with and around its Customers. This requires, first and foremost, the adoption of an Outside-In perspective; recognition that Customer Value is the value perceived by a customer. In fact, our interconnected, always-on world has made this Outside-In, Customer-perceived-Value-led approach a ‘must have’ capability if sustainable success is to be achieved. The Outside-In view allied to “pull” marketing is the only way that the virtually un...
Customer Value? Who decides?
Customer Value Hello. I recently received a letter informing me that UK vehicle registration number P117 DER is for sale, and that this can be arranged to spell out my surname. You can see the idea from the photo. The letter says: “For the above number we are currently looking for offers in the region of £5750 ono (around $8,600); a price that we believe represents excellent value for money when you consider that this is THE perfect plate for your surname.” The letter illustrates two important points: One: Value – like beauty – is in the eye and mind of the beholder. The idea of owning a personalized number plate doesn’t hold the slightest appeal for me. I couldn’t even be bothered to gamble on the investment element. I don’t write this in any pejorative sense: for other members of the Pin...
Are you brave enough for customer centricity?
Customer centric business It is one thing to say that the Customer is at the heart of any business but quite another to fully embrace the idea and have a truly customer centric business. A couple of stories from the not-too-distant past help illustrate the point. First, ask yourself these questions: To build business with a client or prospect what do you need to know about their business? What are your ‘benefits’? What are your ‘strengths’? What do you need to know about the competition – yours and those of your prospect? Now, here’s the first story about the challenges of having a customer centric business. A large, rosewood, mirror-polished table dominates the boardroom; around it, 20 or so black-leather chairs. Half a dozen dinner-plate sized ashtrays signal that we are in a time gone b...
Value in Use, the new foundation of business success
Value in Use We all recognize the astonishing technological advances of recent years. After all, we all carry supercomputers around in our pockets and purses. And we routinely use the internet, “the largest experiment involving anarchy in history”[i]. And terms such as ‘Big Data’, ‘digital world’ and the like are part of everyday business discourse. And yet, and yet, many companies fail to grasp the profundity of a fundamental change that these advances have both enabled and empowered: the power shift from Producer to Customer. Or maybe it’s just that a lot of folk don’t want to see it. For the leaders of enterprises that thrived in the top-down-drivin’, product-pushin’, profit-hustlin’ milieu of 20th century business, the need for fundamental change may not be greeted with wholehearted en...
Fresh thinking, energy and results at the Customer-Supplier interface
Value Genie helps businesses move from a product or service focus to a customer value focus. Our insights, tools and resources build customer value-led organisations: those that out-perform their peers by creating and delivering true value.
Which came first, the Product or the Customer Outcome?
Customer Outcome It is along towards ten o’clock one April evening in 1990, and I am sitting in a restaurant in west London with my friend John Frazer-Robinson – JFR for short. We went there for lunch and are now nine hours in to a lively conversation about the future of sales and marketing. (Total Quality Marketing[i] was published in 1991.) One of the topics we discuss is his theory of three generations of selling. I am immediately fascinated. It’s the genesis of an obsession with Customer Value Management that has stayed with me to this day. Value Creation =Customer Outcome All buying decisions (all decisions, in fact) are based upon Value judgements, where ‘value’ is an individual’s or group’s assessment of what something is worth, weighing the benefits of whatever is on offer against ...
Customer Value Creation
Customer Value Creation Customer Strategy development Customer Value assessment Value Proposition development Message development Collateral creation How do you feel about tackling every new day in your business? Is it exciting? Do you feel that you are building a great future, or just tinkering with the present? Do you feel that you’re positively differentiated in the eyes of your Customers, or just following along with the crowd? Where once businesses mass-sold products to mass Customer groups, they need now to focus on valued outcomes for individual Customers. This mega shift from product- and market-orientation to Customer-relationship orientation is, as they say, a whole new ball game. The fact that customers now have greater power and influence in the affairs of the companies that th...
(Customer) Satisfaction
Customer Satisfaction Back in 1965 The Rolling Stones unleashed (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, a protest against conformity, including the conformity demanded by the powerful mass marketing forces of the time: “When I’m watchin’ my TV And a man comes on to tell me How white my shirts can be But he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke The same cigarettes as me”[i] In the same year a business growth model was published that expressed and promoted that very conformity. Igor Ansoff’s famous Matrix synthesized everything down to just Products and Markets, resulting in four possible business growth strategies[ii]: Market Penetration = Existing Product in Existing Market Market Development = Existing Product in New Market Product Development = New Product in Existi...
