Recent

Should Your Business Be Selling Price, Not “Value”? Many suppliers serving business markets are finding a growing number of customers simply want to have their basic requirements met at a competitive price. These customers do not believe that in their businesses the superior features that suppliers claim for their offerings actually would deliver superior value or cost savings. These superior features may not deliver superior value or cost savings, because the supplier insufficiently understands the customer’s business and what its requirements are. Alternatively, even if the superior features do provide superior value or cost savings to the customer, the supplier has not provided evidence or proof that would justify paying the price premium that it is asking. Whatever the case may be, we are finding suppliers that are prospering by meeting customer’s basic requirements at a competitive price. James Narus of Wake Forest University and I are engaged in management practice research to better understand how suppliers can successfully meet this challenge. To learn more about this research or participate in it, please contact us.
Launch of Customer Value Expert Toolset® - CVET LLC has recently launched Customer Value Expert Toolset® 4.0, which is innovative software that enables companies to achieve world-class customer value management capability. CVET® provides a guided, methodical approach for suppliers serving business markets to conduct customer value research projects, and then to create and put into practice value-based sales tools that demonstrate and document the superior value their market offerings provide to target customers. Pilot program customers already are using CVET in their businesses. To learn more about CVET and what it might do for your business, please contact us or visit: www.CustomerValueExpert.com.
Why the Highest Price Isn’t the Best Price - James Anderson has an article on value-based pricing in business markets that appears in the Winter 2010 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. This article, co-authored with Professors Marc Wouters and Wouter van Rossum, provides a framework for value-based pricing. It draws on their management practice research, where they interviewed managers about their recent experience in attempting to set the price of a new or changed market offering based upon its value to target customers. These managers are working in a diverse array of industries. Anderson, van Rossum and Wouters found that best-practice suppliers implement value-based pricing to both boost profits and strengthen customer relations. Many managers presume that each of these outcomes can only be attained at the expense of the other. To get a reprint of this article, please visit: MIT Sloan Management Review
Working with VentureLab Twente in the Netherlands - James Anderson continues to provide Customer Value Management and Customer Value Proposition Seminars for each new cohort of VentureLab Twente participants in Enschede, the Netherlands. VentureLab Twente is a community of entrepreneurs, scientists, managers and experts from industry and the financial world, brought together with one aim: assisting high-technology, high potential start-ups to develop and reach their full potential (for more on VentureLab Twente, please visit: www.venturelabtwente.com). These aspiring entrepreneurs learned that constructing a value proposition that prospective customers find persuasive is crucial for the success of their new ventures. To put into practice what they have learned in the Seminars, the participants complete an assignment to gather data from prospective customers and develop resonating focus value propositions. They then share the results of this assignment and build upon them in a Customer Value Workshop that James Anderson conducts.

 

Past

Value Propositions - James Anderson and Gregory Carpenter were invited to write the entry on Value Propositions for the Wiley International Encyclopedia of Marketing.  The encyclopedia covers the major developments in marketing that have occurred over the last decade in: knowledge management, globalization, new technologies, services marketing and customization, entrepreneurship and emerging markets, networks and alliances, new organizational forms, and new avenues for business growth. Publication of the seven volume set has begun with Volume 1: Marketing Strategy, which was published in early 2011.

ISBM Winter Conference - James Anderson gave the keynote presentation and was the program chair for the 14th Winter Conference of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) in Tampa, Florida, on February 26 and 27, 2008. About 150 managers from member and guest companies attended the Conference and each received a copy of his recent book , with Nirmalya Kumar and James Narus, Value Merchants: Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets. After James’ keynote presentation on “Value Merchants”, senior managers from SKF, Kennametal, PeopleFlo Manufacturing, Baldor, Grainger, Composites One, and Quaker Chemical gave presentations on their companies’ experiences in implementing customer value management. The managing directors of Axios Partners and Orange Orca, strategic implementation partners of James C. Anderson LLC, also gave presentations on their work in assisting client firms in implementing customer value management. Each of these presentations provided insightful observations and details on implementing and sustaining customer value management in business markets.

Customer Value Management Seminars for ISBM - James Anderson, for the first time, offered his two-day Customer Value Management Seminar for the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) on June 9th and 10th, 2008 in Evanston, Illinois (a suburb just north of Chicago on Lake Michigan). The schedule for this seminar was:

Day One:

8:30
-
8:45
   Seminar introduction
8:45
-
10:15
   Customer value management
10:15
-
10:30
   Break
10:30
-
11:45
   Small group breakout: Kunst 1600 case preparation
11:45
-
1:00
   Lunch
1:00
-
2:30
   Building customer value models: Kunst 1600
2:30
-
2:45
   Break
2:45
-
4:00
   Small group breakout: Defining points-of-difference and value word equations
4:00
-
5:00
   Small group report-out: Points-of-difference and value word equations

Day Two:

8:30
-
10:00
   Value-based pricing in business markets
10:00
-
10:15
   Break
10:15
-
11:00
   Small group breakout: Applying a value-based pricing framework
11:00
-
11:45
   Applying a value-based pricing framework: TSM Pharmaceutische Groothandel
11:45
-
1:00
   Lunch
1:00
-
2:45
   Crafting persuasive customer value propositions in business markets
2:45
-
3:00
   Seminar conclusion and next-steps

 

For more on these customer value management seminars and to register for them, please visit: http://www.smeal.psu.edu/isbm/seminars/events/valuemgt.html