Value Types

There are three ways of approaching the rapid development of a tactical strategy. Each shares some common elements, and one of them is defining the Types of Value you deliver to your customers. By splitting the value you provide into generic categories, you can assess the impact develop language in your marketing and tender documents, and do a comparative assessment. These categories can be whatever you like, but these work well for most B2B, and are broadly applicable. Note that not all may apply in all cases.

What impact does your offering have on the customer’s business? What can he do better?

• He may be able to reduce his own costs
• He may be able to mitigate his risks
• He may be able to increase the prices he can charge for his products
• He may be able to improve the efficiency of his own business
• It may help him protect (or, perhaps regain) his reputation
• It may enable him to meet legal or industry compliance requirements.

Splitting it up this way may sound simple (and, in fact, often it is!) but it helps you define what you do, and what impact your offering has on the customer’s own business. This in turn provides a method of working out what the Value Ceiling is, either in absolute terms or relative to his business. A reasonable proportion of this is the maximum you could realistically charge for your service or product; fail to understand this and you are stuck in a “cost-plus” mindset.