Value is in the mind of a customer not a persona

At Social Business One Wim Rampen discusses value:

Most companies (their marketing departments in particular) are stuck in telling Customers what value for their money they get, based on the flawed thinking that the Customer derives value from the product itself. Yet, they are completely ignoring the Customer’s role in the process of value creation.

It's a theme which resonates with me as I've often found that people, even today!, don't clearly understand:

1. The difference between value, benefits, advantages, and features; and,
2. That value is in the mind of the ultimate individual buyer.

What I mean by the second point is that it is a person who ultimately creates a value equation, even if assessed by a team or group. The person who will wear the organisational results is the one who assesses the impact on their career, status, integration capacity etc etc. This is also the person who has to navigate the purchase and the implementation through their business fabric.

Value = Benefits - Cost

So while Value = Benefits - Cost might look like a dry equation there is not only emotion involved but also much subjective assessment of "benefits".  Even products/services with clear tangible benefits, and those which rank 1st in that regard, may not win at the end of the day because of the personal assessment of "costs" may exceed those which match the buyer's personal acceptance profile.

Social business and understanding value

Wim makes a couple of key points, namely that marketing messages and departments don't address value because they ignore the customer's role in creating value, and that "listening" in social business does not necessarily lead to participation in conversations which help you understand how a customer create's value from your product.

So energy directed at understanding a potential customer's use cases in important. Beyond that it is also important to listen and contribute to some additional factors. The buyer's buying process is key, to understand as much as possible is important, but even more important if you can suggest ways to help buyers through their own buying processes. The way buyer perceives their buying process adds to both the cost and the benefits of a product, so this is a crucial element.

You should also be listening for opportunities to understand the value landscape which the customer can potentially create from your product, as this will not only inform discussions about how value can be created, but whether or not you are capturing your fair share of that value.

In closing, I noticed one comment on Wim's post which said that social business "only works well for companies that deliver a competitively superior product". I don't believe that, or at least I believe something which I think is closely related but in disagreement.

Social business helps you verify and explore (discover) how customers are creating value from your product, and how much.

Can Marketing sell?

And I also noticed a comment which said, after having considered the post, that marketing "should and could focus" on "the customer's job" i.e. the value the product creates. I'm not sure that "marketing" can ever do that, because of the exact point that marketing cannot get close to an individual, and therefore cannot be aware of the final value = benefits - cost equation. That is Sales.

Marketing deals with features and advantages. Sales has to translate those into benefits with a value for an individual. That's the tough job which Sales always faces.

Personas

Often, "personas" are created to represent buying segments of people, especially where internet sales are the channel e.g. Software as a Service (SaaS). A persona is an approximation to a person and therefore an approximation to a value proposition. Creating personas and associated value propositions is an attempt to automate the sales processes, even though it will also shape the marketing messages. For example the "find" part of a website would be marketing, and the next step towards sales is all about Sales and creating personified value through clear exposition of benefits versus costs.

Because this online attempt to create "value" is devoid of buyer emotion and ignorant of their buying processes then it can never represent true value but is a representation of perceived value to a persona which, in the case of SaaS, can be "tried before you buy" and therefore tested by a real person.

What's your view of persona, marketing, sales - can Marketing rise above features and advantages?

Image via Wikipedia

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