Monthly Archives: February 2011

When a task needs completed or a service delivered, a sure fire way of determining that the person funding the initiative does not understand the value is when they focus entirely on price. It’s common to see decision makers shoot themselves in the foot with what looks like a legitimate stance to take. "Service costs are soaring so lets reduce the funding so that the service provider will be forced to do more with less." I blame the service providers for not being able to articulate value, not the decision makers. In many of these cases the service providers have been unable to articulate the value sufficiently to motivate the decision maker to find the funds. Many people remember the television commercial recommending regular oil changes as a way to reduce long term costs. Regardless of your opinion of the product, this commercial is a terrific benchmark to learn from for people who are too close to the product or service. Notice how they didn’t focus on the technology inside the oil filter at all? Instead, they focusing on higher value.