OWP liVe REPORT

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Bridging the value gap can help your B2B uncork the genie

M A R K E T S

Your B2B firm believes it has a great product but your customers aren’t convinced? It’s time to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that what you think you offer may not be what the buyer sees. Unless the business starts to first assess and then address the value gap between its perceptions of the product and those of the potential buyers, the problem will persist. “The good news about investigating the value gap is that it allows you the space to work on bridging it and the bigger the difference that exists, the greater the opportunity to balance it and reap the rewards. If you find you have a value gap, you are sitting on a potential goldmine. It is up to you to grab it,” said Frédéric Dalsace, Professor Marketing and Strategy. Five key discrepancies incrementally affect the size of the value gap. Each of them can be addressed with relevant solutions in order to reduce the overall gap. By aligning

value and customer perception, a better product fit is achieved, communication snags are ironed out and the customer’s needs are more clearly addressed.

you offer useful for all your customers? It might be better to segment and offer a range of solutions to appeal to basic, professional and premium users but fence the segments to prevent clients from applying a pick-and-mix approach that leaves you out of pocket. Consider a cafeteria approach where the customers build their own product with a price that rises with each added specification. This entails a product full of useful features that the customer is unable to extract value from. Solution: Recalibrate your relationship with the customer. Think about the pre- and post-purchase interactions that currently occur. Monitor frontline interactions and supplement them with additional material, such as YouTube instruction videos or a community practice forum where users share tips. Develop the sales service to offer bespoke sessions; this could add another revenue stream. Finally, the Internet of Things (IoT) enables 3 The Capability Gap

The Distortion Gap

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This occurs when a firm decides to be liberal about the truth of its offer.

Solution: The solution to the distortion gap is to go heavy on fact checking. Audit your communication clearance processes, involve your R&D and legal teams and introduce cross-organizational, benchmarked procedures. This will weed out hyperbolic claims. Establish a higher- level organizational purpose to ensure exaggerated claims are minimized.

FRÉDÉRIC DALSACE IMD Professor of Marketing and Strategy

The Relevance Gap

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This refers to over-specified products or services that may only be relevant to a fraction of your customers.

Solution: Apply a brutally critical eye to your offer. Are all the value elements