Often we don’t link our products to our customers’ anticipated benefits.
Or we mistake indirect value for direct business value - a change in the P&L.
Every business aims to grow revenue and reduce costs (the fundamental business equation!).
The CSM’s job is to drive toward that outcome and *demonstrate* our product’s impact on it, even if indirect.
So what impact does your product have?
Here’s a way to think about the benefits of your solution.
The further down this list you go, the more work you have to do to link outcomes to business results:
📍Direct Outcomes
Direct impact on the budget typically through decreased costs.
📍 Semi-direct Outcomes
Impacts budget (cost or income), but adjusted for probability of success.
📍Indirect Outcomes
Improve team member productivity: do something faster or more efficiently or at higher quality than you could before
📍Price of Entry Outcomes
Expected benefits, don’t directly raise productivity over competitive solutions. Of political importance.
How can we do a better job of linking benefits to customer business outcomes?
And at what points do you have these conversations with your customers?
(Credit to Nucleus Research for the 4 orders concept)
