Value Merchants

If you’re a supplier serving business markets, you’re probably used to purchasing managers who focus on getting price concessions. But what if you could back your proposal with hard data, not vague promises?

Solid evidence of the superior value you can deliver will set your company apart from “commodity” suppliers and persuasively show purchasing managers that your company really can help them achieve their cost reduction goals.

This strategy is the foundation of an innovative new business philosophy developed specifically for suppliers that serve business markets. Dubbed customer value management, this analytics-driven approach focuses on gathering and analyzing data in order to demonstrate, in monetary terms, trhe superior value that your products deliver to customers.

Value Merchants offers a detailed, step-by-step explanation of customer value management and how to implement it. The authors provide the tools to turn your salespeople into "value merchants", who can conceptualize your company's value and work with customers to document cost savings and substantiate results over time.

Anderson, Kumar, and Narus developed and refined the concepts and tools they outline during many years of consulting with business market clients and researching management practices. They bring their concepts to life for readers with plentiful practical examples drawn from a variety of industries and countries.

If your salespeople make vague promises without any hard data to back their claims, or if your company is all too often forced to compete on price alone, Value Merchants can help you develop new strategies that shift the focus from slashing price points to demonstrating and documenting superior value.

1. Value Merchants
   Doing Business on Demonstrably Superior Value
2. Conceptualize Value
   Focusing on What Matters
3. Formulate Value Propositions
   Identifying Potentially Valuable Points of Difference
4. Substantiate Value Propositions
   Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value
5. Tailor Market Offerings
   Creating Naked Solutions with Options
6. Transform the Sales Force into Value Merchants
   Selling on Value, Not Price
7. Profit from Value Provided
   Earning an Equitable Return
8. Prosper in Business Markets
   Being a Value Merchant

• Appendix A: Relating Customer Value and Price
• Appendix B: PeopleFlo EnviroGear Pump Customer Value Model

Great title, bad book. I thought this was about value-based management/marketing, but it is just another sales-handbook. And a prtetty lousy such as well. The whole books is about that you should translate what your offering can do for your customer (and only B2B customer as such) into monetary terms. Aka, don't sell on price-point alone, but try to find another value as well.

Duh, this is in every sales-handbook since 1980, so the only value you have from this book is its nice title and some salespersons will start to call themselves Value-Merchants instead.

In short, spend your money elsewhere, there is no value to be had here!