“It’s the Value, st***d!”

Value Funnel Step 1: Value Comprehension

Value Comprehension is the starting point for a great Value Funnel. This is all about understanding your customer needs. But I mean really understanding them. If you want to be customer centric, then you first must identify your customers. This goes way deeper than just naming a market cluster like “mid-income urban males”. You must emphasize. Start by putting yourself in their shoes to figure out how they behave. And, in their minds, to understand how they think.

A great tool in this phase is to develop a Customer Persona. Customer Persona are not difficult to develop (and you can check out these tools). If you want to go a step further than a nice Persona visual, consider Adele Revella’s Buyer Persona approach. This introduces the concept of “The 5 Rings of Buying Insights”. Adele’s framework is a must for serious B2B players.

Value Funnel Step 2: Value Creation

Finally, you are ready for Value Creation which is the second phase of the Value Funnel. The most intuitive approach I have found to date is the Value Proposition Canvas by Strategyzer. Start by focusing on what to customer is trying to achieve. Behind this primary goal there will be a multiple of tasks that need to occur for the goal to be fulfilled. Then, go a level deeper, and determine what elements could prevent these tasks from happening. These are pain points. At the same time, figure out how success would look like for the customer. These positive outcomes are the gains.

 Watch out though, as this simplicity hides a rigorous process. The ability of understanding the big picture of the customer life and the ability to distinguish “facts” from “assumptions” will determine success.

It’s only at this stage that you flip back to your offer. Determine what features provide what benefits. Which of these benefits relieve some pains or create gains? Those are the ones you add into the value proposition basket. The others? Well, if they neither relieve pains nor create gains, then why even offer them?

Your basket may be full enough to drive a compelling value proposition. If so, move onto the next phase. If not, you have  all the insights you need to strengthen the value proposition. How can you resolve some additional unmet pains or gains by designing new services? Quick incremental innovations will plug a lot of leaks in the Value Funnel.

EXAMPLE:

Let’s assume that you are a B2B supplier of attic insulation. Your customers are small enterprises offering to isolate homeowners’ attics.

In the pre-historic & product centric times, your value proposition could have been a list of features.

“My widget is more isolating and less toxic” or maybe covering some benefits “Widget takes less space and is safe”.

In the customer centric era, your insights may have discovered that a key pain that these small enterprises is to find the homeowners. And suddenly the value proposition evolves into “More than insulation, we help you grow your business” with new services such as setting up web sites populated with regular content.

Your original value proposition moves from focusing solely on what you sell to include an additional layer of how you sell. This is the start of the creation on a unique Customer Experience that reinforces your differentiation in the marketplace.

Value Funnel Step 3: Value Communication

If your customers don’t understand how your offer creates value, don’t blame them. Blame your messaging.

Great Value Communication has 2 essential ingredients. The most important component, the glue that holds the entire messaging together, is emotion. Volumes of research has confirmed that emotions are the basis of our primary decision-making. Rational thoughts are just an afterthought justification. Hence the importance of capturing emotional insights during the first two phases.

The research in neuroscience is one of the fastest pacing in modern marketing. The most actionable read (a lot seem to be designed for people holding multiple PhD’s)  is “The Persuasion Code” by Christophe Morin and Patrick Renvoise. Their NeuroMap approach will be able to measure the ability of your message to deliver to the primal brain.

Secondly all tangible components of your value proposition need to be quantified. According to Malcolm MacDonald only 5% of business quantify value propositions. So don’t be surprised if this is a leak in your Value Funnel. You are not alone.

Quantification of the value proposition is the first, and necessary step, if you are going to drive a value-based pricing strategy.

Quantification of value proposition is somewhat of an art.

EXAMPLE:

If we look at the previous example, what is the value of providing a website with regular content?You could consider a cost-plus approach. What is the cost to develop the website with content? Since you are going to be offering this to a multiple of customers, there is going to be some degree of standardization. The cost could therefore be as low as 500€.You could also consider the competitive approach. How much would the customer have to pay to develop and populate a site by himself. In this case, an independent site developer might charge 2 000€ and a copywriter an additional 200€/month or a total of 4 800€.

But the true value to the customer would be the extra business that the site generates. If the site generates 100 leads per month that converts at 5% for an average insulation job of 5 000€, now you have a value proposition that is worth 300 000€!