How to Avoid Commoditization Through Differentiation
By Mike Press
Marketing facilitated a cross-functional team workshop to review MTP whole product concepts and definitions. We demonstrated the difference between the Company’s view of value and the customer’s view, we discussed the difference between selling “drills” and delivering “holes,” and we talked about other semiconductor suppliers who have been effective in selling a whole product.
We engaged each workshop participant by asking them to write down “why do we get paid more than other suppliers?” and then we discussed our responses.
The effect of education and standardization of our augmented product terminology was widespread and immediate. For instance, one Marketing and Engineering team that had been chartered to come up with “innovation ideas,” altered their charter to that of seeking “solution value” opportunities.
Tactics
After the cross-functional education session, we started hosting smaller group discussions among Sales and Marketing team members to define the purchase process so we could understand in more detail the jobs of the customer influencers we were meeting with, what we were talking about in those meetings, and why we were winning at premium price.
