Value Is In the Eye of the Beholder

End Users Stakeholders

For the end-users of your product or service, the value created is that your widgets (whatever they are) actually perform well. End users also value good support and service. Even if you can create a higher level of value for their organization, if you don’t create the value they need, you won’t win their votes.

Management Stakeholders

Management stakeholders look to their end-user stakeholders to ensure that what you sell will work for them. Then they add the new level of they require. Management stakeholders need you to deliver business results. These results translate to increased revenue, decreased costs, or increased profit. If you sell only the features and benefits that the end-user stakeholders care about, you’ll lose the management stakeholders.

Executive Leadership Stakeholders

As you move up to executive leadership, the bar is even higher. Executive management wants to be certain you can deliver for their management stakeholders. They also want to be sure your solution delivers for their end-user stakeholders. Then executive leadership stacks a new level of value on top of these: strategic fit. Leadership wants you to bring a strategic fit to the relationship. They want you to help them compete in their space. They want you proactively bring them new ideas. They want you to help them see around corners.

Value is in the eye of the beholder. Selling a higher level of value to a group of stakeholders that won’t benefit from that level of value doesn’t work. Selling a lower level of value to a group of stakeholders that needs something more doesn’t work either.

To build consensus, you have to create the right level of value for the right group of stakeholders.

Questions

What do you do to create value for your end user clients?

What value do your management stakeholders expect you to create?

How different is executive management’s expectation of you when it comes to value creation?

How can you use the different levels of value you create to build consensus in your dream client companies?