Unpacking customer value

An outside-in approach - taking the customer’s perspective at every stage of the lifecycle - is fundamental to customer-led growth. How your products and services deliver value to customers, i.e. the measurable results to the key roles in the companies you target, is the red thread of a B2B SaaS company. It is how you describe your value proposition; what marketing communicates; what sales sell; what services enable and, most importantly, what your product delivers.

Customer value (a term I recognise but dislike as I explain here) is a collection of inter-related factors:

• the customer role(s) involved in the purchase, use and exploitation of your product;

• their challenges and opportunities - pain/gain points at different stages of the customer lifecycle;

• the role specific and broad business metrics (KPIs) they are seeking to improve;

• the goals they have for these metrics.

Addressing the role specific pain/gain points is at the core of what your organisation does so being able to understand these factors and the resources you provide to communicate and address them is key. I have used a concept I call Value Framework to help companies understand and navigate these inter-relationships and associated content. The diagram below shows the structure that underpins this.

Fig 1: Structure of a value framework

Here’s an explanation for each element of the framework.

ICP Customer Role. The starting point of the framework is the detailed Role Profile element described in your Ideal Customer Profile.

Customer Pain/Gain describes the work of each role in terms of their challenges (pains) and opportunities (gains). The ICP Role Profile sets out the core pain/gain, which are expanded in the Customer Engagement Blueprint, which describes pain/gain points faced by key roles at different stages of the lifecycle.

Customer Goals describe the quantum of improvement sought by addressing the pain/gain points.

Issue/Capability describes the areas your product addresses. For example, a lead generation product may address content strategy, paid advertising and campaign management. Issues/Capabilities can be tracked by one or more value metrics

Value Metrics are the role specific measurable results for each pain/gain point. They are typically the main activity and outcome metrics for that role. Improving these measurable results delivers the benefits that underpin retention, expansion and advocacy.

Business Impact describes the high level impact that is achieved by busing your product/services. They often stem from the cumulative effect of each role achieving measurable improvements in their Value Metrics. In some cases, especially for senior roles, they are also role-specific KPIs.

Value Elements are the multitude of resources you provide to help key roles address their pain/gain points at different stages of the customer lifecycle. Marketing content, sales tools, support articles and intervention playbooks are just some examples.

Product features and data are a special and most important category of Value Elements: the functionality that address the different pain/gain points and deliver the measurable results for each key role you sell to and serve.

Much of these data exist but are disparate and disconnected. Understanding the inter-relationships is vital to telling and delivering a coherent, joined-up customer experience. Productivity and effectiveness are further important benefits. Here’s a few examples of how a value framework is used:

• improve messaging by selecting marketing and sales resources (Value Elements) that address the pain/gain points for a specific role;

• improve demo impact by designing value-based demos that focus on how the product addresses a role’s main pain/gain points;

• identify product gaps by mapping features to measurable results to pain/gain points;

• train new starters in your value proposition;

• create a common point of access to all content;

• strengthen sales, renewals and expansion conversion by guiding the creation of tools and resources for role-specific pain/gain points.

As the content and structure of a framework is established, I see a number of developments:

• capture details of value metrics and business impact achieved to guide customers in setting realistic goals;

• introduce industry/segment variables where applicable;

• guide the creation of maturity models based on results achieved;

• provide access direct to customers.

I have built an Airtable app to implement Value Frameworks for a couple of companies. Here’s a screenshot of one part from a Value Framework I built for ….. value frameworks!

Fig 2: Value Framework app screenshot

I am currently exploring how to use AI to improve both the creation of a value framework and its subsequent use.

Want help in building a Value Framework for your company? Drop me a DM using the LinkedIn link below.