Kelford Labs Daily: Their perception, your value

“Customers attach value to a product in proportion to its perceived ability to help solve their problems or meet their needs. All else is derivative.”

— Ted Levitt

It’s common to hear entrepreneurs lament the customer’s lack of sophistication about their industry.

“They don’t understand that our product is higher quality.”

Or, “They don’t realize how much time we’ve spent creating this.”

Or, “They’re unwilling to pay for good products.”

But these complaints are a dead end—there’s no point in even going there. Because the problem isn’t the customer’s lack of understanding, it’s ours.

When we get frustrated that we’re being undervalued, it’s because we’re undervaluing our prospects.

We’re not paying attention to what they value, what they care about, what they need, or the choices they want to make.

There is no “market” for something nobody wants to buy.

It seems obvious, but what it means is that our value is entirely determined by the people who choose (or choose not) to purchase. No amount of “educating” the market will help if the customer doesn’t care.

If we want our prospects to appreciate our high quality, we need to find the people who already do. And we need to know how they talk about quality, so we can use the same words they do.

Our “value” as a business is indistinguishable from the value our customers perceive. One does not exist without the other.

If we want our prospects to appreciate our value, we need to know how they perceive value, what they care about, and how they talk about it.

So we can say the same things.