Steps to Better Performance and Value Using
the Tools of Customer Value Management
Businesses have many levers available to manage their customer-perceived value (e.g. product innovation, pricing, and advertising.) Ideally, before rushing to apply these levers, business should take the discrete steps necessary to sort out their true priorities and strategically coordinate their actions. The Value-Strategy Toolkit™ Software can help with the analytic side of things:
Harness your data
Companies often fail to exploit valuable information that they have regarding how to make products more competitive. CVI’s Value-Strategy Toolkit™ software helps you extract insights from your data. The Value Map helps you understand your current competitive position. The Radar Chart helps you spot threats on the horizon. The Key-Events and Won-Lost analyses help you extract insights from your competitive histories.
Know your product’s strengths and vulnerabilities
Understanding how customers perceive their alternatives is a good starting point for developing your strategy. The Value Map can suggest reasons why you are gaining or losing market share. The Product-Appraisal Table quantifies the worth to customers of advantages and disadvantages you have relative to the competition, by attribute.
Segment your market profitably
Not all customers look for the same thing. The Value-Strategy Simulator allows you to test the attractiveness of your current or proposed offer from the perspective of different market segments.
Craft your value proposition
What will distinguish the experience customers get from you versus from your competitors? TheComparative Advanrtages Table shows at a glance the unique strengths of each supplier. The Value-Strategy Toolkit™ allows you to test how customers will perceive alternative price and benefit offers.
Shift from cost-plus to Market-Value pricing
The costs of making a product may not reflect the economic value of the product to customers. The Product-Appraisal table and Value-Pricing Chart show the fair-value price of your products and tell what the different capabilities of the product are worth to customers.
Align your organization
It’s easy to lose alignment between actions and objectives. The What/Who Matrix, Program/Objectives Matrix, and Program/Responsibilities Matrix document the linkages between your strategic programs and the attributes that matter to customers.
Prepare your sales team for communicating the performance advantages and added value of your products
In the final stages of a sale, companies frequently find themselves vying with one or two specific competitors for a contract. A Head-to-Head Value Comparison shows your strengths and weaknesses against an individual competitor. The analysis can be tailored to the particular needs of the individual customer.
These analytical steps to better value need not be taken sequentially. However, all steps should be explored periodically since each offers the possibility of improving customer-perceived value, yielding improved profits and growth for your business.