Customer Reviews

Competing on Value

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This book discusses VALUE. Value is not what you put INTO your products and services, it is what the customer GETS OUT. Three qualifiers of value are how much, how soon, and how sure--these are what the customer needs to know.

Value is applied to impact a customer's business--his profits. Profits come from the customer selling more and/or from reducing costs. Nothing else matters.

Four chapters summarize the value strategy: know your value, price your value, sell your value, and control your value. These chapters and this book are invaluable for getting away from selling on features and functions and, instead, competing on value.

This book is tremendous in its own right, and it is--or should be--the "prerequisite" for one of Hanan's other books, "Consultative Selling."

In summary, this is highly recommended for every company that sells products and/or services.

It contains mostly common sense - but as we all know, common sense isn't common. The most important take aways from the book were th know what your value really is, know how to effectively measure it, now how to effectively translate the value into customer value, and know how to reliably control the delivery of the value to the market. A good reminder.

It contains mostly common sense - but as we all know, common sense isn't common. The most important take aways from the book were th know what your value really is, know how to effectively measure it, now how to effectively translate the value into customer value, and know how to reliably control the delivery of the value to the market. A good reminder.

Here it is, March 2009 and I'm just now getting around to reviewing this book. My apologies to Mack and Peter! Even though the book is quite old (by today's standards) its lessons are timeless. Especially relevant in today's corporate world are the sections on:

- how to talk value to different levels in an organization
- understanding how "good enough" can be a devastating opponent
- how to reposition your competitor as low value

Some of the examples are a bit dated, but the principles are still highly relevant. This is a great book for both beginner and expert salespeople. It is also relevant for selling "internal" ideas!

Why bother telling something in a long and cumbersome way, if you can say it straight? The authors of the book cover an important concept of the economic value to the customer and its application to sales/business strategy. However, the book will make anyone who received formal business education yawn. It lacks real-life examples AND IS OVERLY REPETITIVE. This could have been a nice and fresh magazine article, instead it turned into a stiff and boring hardcover book.