Using Value to Win Customers
Value – The Cornerstone to Strategy
QDI’s principals believe delivering value is the key to successfully entering new markets, launching new products and growing market share. We have spent more than 25 years in the consulting field developing tools and concepts to help clients create value-based products, sales tools, communications and support programs.
To create value, you must identify market needs and develop products and services to meet those needs. To capture value, businesses must design “go-to-market” strategies that present and communicate value and support customers in the purchase, use and ultimate disposal and replacement of a product.
All marketers list multiple features for their products. However, these features aren’t meaningful until they’re translated into customer benefits. Furthermore, unless the benefits are superior to those offered by competitors or offered at a significantly lower price, they have relatively little value. We believe many marketers lose market share because they fall short when it comes to succinctly defining the benefits and costs customers incur to purchase and adopt their product.
James C. Anderson, the leading academic voice in marketplace value, demonstrates the importance of understanding, creating and delivering value in his books Value Merchants and Business Market Management. Like Anderson, QDI recognizes the need to measure the customer’s value in economic terms. While other marketing professionals also see the importance of value, many are challenged by how to quantify the customer’s value relative to competitive offerings. What distinguishes QDI is that we have developed value equations to measure incremental value and ultimately created our Value Estimator Workbook™.
QDI’s Value Model™ (VM)
QDI's Value Model™ (VM) is a formula we’ve developed to help marketers solve the age old “features versus benefits” dilemma. Too many businesses mistakenly concentrate attention on features rather than benefits and speak in generalities rather than specifics. QDI’s Value Model helps marketers clearly define the perceived benefits and total costs of a product or service from the customer’s perspective. To generate sales, marketers must emphasize the features that truly set their product/service apart from the competition.
Value Estimator Workbook™ (VEW)
QDI’s Value Estimator Workbook™ (VEW) is a powerful interactive software tool designed to evaluate competitive value propositions. The VEW focuses on targeting a market segment and then defining the specific benefits and costs a customer incurs when choosing one product over competitive alternatives.
Workbook exercises project a measurement of “close rate” which is the percentage of time you win the sale over your competitor. Use QDI’s Value Estimator Workbook™ to learn how to adjust your value proposition to win more business. By quantifying your value versus the competitions’ for particular customers or customer segments, you identify specific performance dimensions where you excel or fall short. The ability to address and eliminate barriers early on avoids costly mistakes that could jeopardize success.
Value Management Workbook™ (VMW)
QDI incorporates formulas from the Value Estimator Workbook™ along with market presence measurement models in its Value Management Workbook™ (VMW).
The VMW enables businesses to project market shares for specific customers or customer segments. Use the workbook to simulate how different product and channel changes to your value proposition or market presence will impact your market share. By identifying the impact and estimating the costs of alternative actions, businesses are able to project marketing ROIs. The VMW has the potential to save millions of valuable marketing dollars that might have been spent inappropriately.
Value Management Systems Model ™ (VMSM)
QDI consultants developed this tool (for both executives and line management) to maximize organizational performance and profit by aligning all decisions, strategies and tactics to achieve specific market share, revenue and profit goals. The Systems Model highlights the impact of each major marketing force, program/activity, management and decision making process on overall performance as it relates to delivering sales revenue.
While QDI’s Value Model, Value Estimator Workbook and Value Management Workbook look outside the company to learn the customer’s perception of a product’s value, the Value Management Systems Model takes a deep look at each of the functions inside the company and pinpoints areas that need to be changed to achieve goals. Learn if all activities, programs and processes are doing their part to deliver customer value. One or two miss-aligned activities can jeopardize the success of an entire effort.
The Value Management Systems Model is particularly effective when a business is looking for very specific results (e.g., a certain level of revenue, or a new mix of products or to increase sales through distributors). If you’re about to launch a product or post launch, the Systems Model can be used to identify weak links that must be corrected to reduce risk and save marketing dollars.
