5 Questions to ask to discover value

Hello all, Rob DeRobertis signing in for the Technology Marketing Center...

[Editor's note.  It has been a whirlwind of change for me over the last few weeks.  I changed companies leaving an employer whom I was with for over 13 years to take on new and bigger challenges. I'm still in high tech, still in marketing and still passionate about delivering value...]

And so here are 5 questions to discover value

To your customer. 

Using the Voice of the Customer technique here are some open ended questions to ask:

1) What are the biggest problems are you trying to solve?  (Another version of this which works for some people "what keeps you up at night").

2) Why are your products going to win in the market? 

3) Why are you winning in the market? or

4) How are you going to beat (insert the customer's competition's name) in the market?

5) If you could do one more thing to insure success in your business what would you do?

To the product marketing team.

If you happen to be in a position reviewing a business plan, these questions to the product marketing team will help solidify the definition of value (or lack thereof) to the plan.

1) "Why are we going to win with this product in the market?"  [This gets to a competive advantage question and defines differenciation].

2) Can we sustain this advantage against the competition over a long period of time?

3) How do we solve a customer's problem better than the competition / alternate methods / current methods used to solve the problem?

4) Can we solve this problem faster than the competition?  

5) Do we provide better capabilities that our customer desires and the competition does not provide?  Can you map these capabilities to the customer's needs.

Comments

[Chris Halliwell]

Great post Rob, thanks and good luck in that new job.
Someone once wisely commented that the ultimate process, rather than a form, a recipe, a even more than a routine in a dynamic environment, is the willingness and ability to ask yourself and your colleagues the right questions. These are good lists.
Chris