To conclude 2019, we look back to some of our favorite blog posts of the past year. Over the past year, we have written about topics as diverse as ways to implement value into product management decisions, strategies for building a customer value-centric sales framework, and the differences between ROI calculators and Value Propositions.
Check out our blog posts of the year, and thanks for reading! We look forward to sharing more thoughts on the ways value can improve B2B business outcomes as we enter the 2020’s.
1. How Customer Centric is Your B2B Commercial Team? A Focused, Digital Approach for the 20’s
Big data, artificial intelligence, connectivity, and automation are all reshaping almost every business activity. Despite infinite possibilities and accelerating change, B2B commercial leaders can still shine a spotlight on the main question: how can we win with our customers in the next decade? In this blog post, we explore ways that a customer centric approach will help B2B organizations make better decisions and achieve enhanced sales performance in the 2020’s.
2. Best Practices for Accelerating Your Value Strategy Q&A
For our October Webinar, Stephan Liozu shared best practices for accelerating value strategy deployment and overall value transformations. To conclude the webinar, he answered some questions from the audience. In this blog post, we share his live answers:
3. Pricing & Selling Packaged B2B Solutions – Part 1: Realize Value on Your Product & Services Bundles
Great B2B companies center their product and pricing decisions on the quantified value of both their products and services. Increasingly, packaged combinations of products and services are driving go-to-market strategies. In this blog, we explore the factors driving this change, reasons business teams should explore strategic packaging options for their products and services, and pitfalls that impair the implementation of successful solution design and selling.
4. When Does Customer Value Enter Your Stage-Gate Process? Embed Value Strategies in Your Innovation Disciplines
Given the huge outlays on R & D in B2B markets, clearly defined processes for development of new products are essential to maximize the speed, efficiency, and productivity of R & D activities. The best organizations focus on customer value early in the product development lifecycle, and embed this value in their product delivery Stage-Gates. In this blog, we draw on our experience with LeveragePoint customers who do this well, and share best practices for customer value deliverables at specific gates in a productive Stage-Gate process.
5. What Do Your Existing Products Deliver to Your Customers? Five Disciplines to Embed Value Management in Product Management
Product management is a functional necessity for businesses selling differentiated products and services. While focusing on new product launch is critical, executing on existing products and services, throughout their product life cycle, is key to driving operating and financial results. In this blog, we focus on value management best practices for products and services that are already on the market.
6. Initiate and Scale Value Selling: Live Practitioner Roundtable Q&A
For our June Webinar, a panel of expert practitioners from leading companies such as Schneider Electric, Borealis, and Dun & Bradstreet shared their secrets to initiating and scaling value selling within their organizations. To conclude the webinar, they answered some questions from the audience, read by our moderator Peyton Marshall. Here are their live answers:
7. What Percent of Value Should We Capture in Price? Framing the Question Influences the Outcomes
The question of how value should be split between the seller and the buyer arises repeatedly in customer-value-centric organizations, In this blog, we explore how different ways of framing the question “What percent of value should we capture in price?” can yield different outcomes, and how incorporating value into pricing decisions improves product launch success and business performance.
8. Transcend Value Calculators: 6 Ways Value Propositions Change the Sales Process
Most Value Calculators are ad-hoc tools designed for a single use. That content is often lost and never used again. Yet, these calculators include central messages about what your solution will deliver to customers. In a calculator, that content is isolated from the rest of the sales process and is rarely connected to other content in the sales library. Great Value Propositions are different from, and better than Value Calculators. In this blog, Peyton Marshall highlights the difference and detail six ways that Value Propositions change the sales process across the entire funnel, and help align sales teams with customers.
9. Value Propositions to Drive Buyer Enablement: Effective Value Selling vs. Marketing Mush – 5 Key Ingredients
The internet has changed the fundamentals of B2B sales. Reps are less necessary to provide product or solution information, configure or quote on a solution, or even take an order or execute a deal. Instead, we’re in a world of buying by committee. Faced with sharper buyer questions, sales teams need sharper answers. There’s a difference between Value Propositions and marketing mush. In this blog, we detail the 5 key ingredients of great Value Content.
10. What is Our Product’s Positioning? Where Are We Headed? Navigate Product Strategy with Value Maps
The technology of creating and using maps has been central to our progress in navigating an increasingly complicated geographic landscape. With the strategic landscape for commercial teams also becoming more complex over time, how do we navigate markets by responding strategically, as opposed to tactically? In this blog, we explore how Value Maps can help us understand an increasingly competitive product landscape by providing strategic insights to help improve performance.
