Winning Through Value Alignment

In today’s challenging markets, both public and private companies are struggling to make their numbers. How can we achieve revenue growth in a climate of reduced customer spending? Complaints from sales and marketing teams abound:

• “We gave the customers what they asked for, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.”
• “Our product/service is terrific, but our customers just don’t get it.”
• “Our offerings are just too expensive.”
• “Some customers love our offering. Why can’t we win more broadly?”

These mask the real issues that drive customer behavior.

In separate, paired interviews with Clarity clients and their customers, we find that the vast majority of companies misunderstand why and how their customers make decisions to buy or not to buy.  Opportunities are lost for what initially look like a broad range of causes, but closer examination reveals that lost opportunities are typically caused by a fundamental problem of value misalignment.  Without consistent value alignment, success is unlikely.  These are the four primary causes of misalignment:

• A company’s offer is simply not what customers need most, especially when compared with other priorities (“…it doesn’t seem to be enough”)
• Customers may need what is offered, but do not perceive the full value (“…they just don’t get it” – exactly!).  Causes can include that the company has not adequately communicated the intended customer value, or the company has not successfully delivered intended benefits to others in the market and compromised its reputation.
• The company has misunderstood how customers compare its offer with those of competitors and used price as the convenient answer (“…we’re just too expensive”)
• The company has inadequately targeted specific customer segments (“… some customers love our offering.”)

Like it or not, customer perceptions of your offerings are the only ones that matter. Your carefully crafted value propositions only become true if customers need the value, learn of it, believe that you will deliver greater value than competitors, act on it, receive it and actually perceive that they received it. And the best way to align the customer’s experiences is to align the company around this set of experiences.

Sales shortfalls hurt companies and the executives in charge. Quick action is essential.  An objective value alignment assessment can rapidly uncover the root causes behind sales shortfalls and identify effective remedial actions to align value and accelerate sales. The answers to these questions reside in the market, not around the conference table.