Avoid the Commodity Trap
Instructor: Reed Holden
If you would like to enroll in this course, please click here to purchase this course individually, click here to purchase the CPP bundle, or click here to purchase the CPE bundle.
During this prolonged market downturn, business clients are especially price sensitive when buying services or a product/service bundle. Many customers have frozen or reduced budgets and use internal resources for less than optimal solutions. Those that are purchasing services are becoming increasingly sophisticated buyers that view services as a series of well-defined commodities that are available from a plethora of companies. Unfortunately, many service vendors have not updated their offering to meet the evolving needs of their business customers. Nor do they communicate their unique value to each client. As a result, customers that are buying focus primarily on price, knowing that suppliers will respond with even greater discounts. Or worse, suppliers will give away services to close the sale of commodity products, thus undermining the true value proposition.
To avoid this commodity trap, companies must become adept at diagnosing their customers’ business problems, developing targeted solutions, targeting the right members of the customer buying organization, and communicating this value to the client in terms relevant to their business. Simply stated, the firm must become a trusted advisor to the customer, partnering with the customer to deliver greater and greater value to their business operations. Absent this relationship, customers will view low-cost as the only value delivered by their commodity provider and will be happy to let multiple vendors duke it out with low prices. Profitable services marketers are astute students of customer economics and are adept at using their insights to create differentiated offerings that generate customer interest and pricing leverage.
This Online Pricing Course is designed for national and global organizations that provide services and/or bundles of products and services.