There is an old adage in business: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Emotionally hook them with benefits, not features. And how exactly does the infamous squirrel play a part in all of this? Attend our workshop to find out more!
Topic
What A Squirrel Can Teach Us about Communicating Value
Speaker
Neil Baron, B2B Product Management Consultant
Summary
There is an old adage in business: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Emotionally hook them with benefits, not features. Yet, most organizations struggle to understand, much less articulate, the value we deliver to customers, emphasizing commoditized functions and features instead of outcomes. We leave it to customers to answer for themselves, “What’s the sizzle? What’s this going to accomplish for me?”
Instead, we need to study and understand what customers need most and then link our products to mouth-watering outcomes customers will crave. In this session, product marketing and management guru Neil Baron will arm us with tools for understanding customer value and conveying the superior results that our products deliver. This is foundational to developing winning products, shortening sales cycles, and pricing on value.
In this session, attendees will learn:
- Why it is so hard to talk customer value
- Why we prefer to talk about features
- Tips for creating value propositions that matter
- Suggestions for pricing based on value
- Frameworks for articulating customer value
- A process for conducting customer interviews that uncover customer value drivers
Bonus content: A story about what a little squirrel taught Neil about customer value
About the Speaker
Neil Baron is an internationally recognized expert at helping B2B companies accelerate growth by implementing product management and product marketing best practices. Prior to starting his consulting firm, Baron Strategic Partners in 2009, he spent many years as an executive with a wide variety of B2B technology companies such as Sybase (now SAP), Brooks Automation, IBM, ATG (now Oracle). He helped companies such as Bank of NY Mellon, Experian, Sensata, LoJack, Dyn (now Oracle), Litle (FIS), and many others exceed their growth goals. He has written extensively for FastCompany, Pragmatic Marketing and Sales and Marketing Management. He has lectured on customer value at MIT, Babson, Tufts, and Ohio State. Outside of work, he enjoys competitive tennis, playing trumpet in a small garage band, and rooting for Boston sports teams. He can be reached via Twitter @neiljbaron or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilbaron/