Our own model · Model
The offer sits in the intersection.
Three rings. Who has the problem and how much it hurts, whether your employees have the right conditions to deliver, and whether you can charge the right price for what you deliver. The offer isn't any of the rings on its own, it's what sits in the intersection between all three. Most companies can answer the rings. Fewer can write the middle on a single line, and fewer still give the same answer if you ask three people from different parts of the house.
The rings
Customers. Who has the problem, and how much it hurts. Not whether the market is large, but whether someone is putting their hand up and wants it solved now.
Employees. Do the people who are meant to deliver have the right conditions. Competence is usually the easy part; it’s the time, the tools and the mandate that tend to be missing.
Price. Can you charge the right price for what you deliver. That isn’t settled in your costing, it’s settled by what the solution is worth to the person buying it, and the price is just that value expressed in kronor. An offer that only holds up when you squeeze the price isn’t an offer, it’s a phase.
Two out of three isn’t enough
The model becomes useful in the combinations, because each missing piece produces a recognisable condition.
If you have customers and price but not employees, you’re selling what you can’t manage to deliver. The deals come in, the delivery burns itself out, and quality falls exactly where you promised the most.
If you have customers and employees but not price, you’re delivering something you’re not properly paid for. Everyone is satisfied except the year-end accounts, and the conversation lands on a discount every time, because price is the only thing left to talk about when the value hasn’t been stated.
If you have employees and price but not customers, you have a good solution to a problem too few people have. That’s the most expensive of the three, because it can go on for a long time before anyone says it out loud.
The test
Write the middle on one line, meaning what your primary offer actually is. Then put the same question to three people: one from sales, one from delivery and one from management.
The value doesn’t lie in your being able to answer. It lies in whether you answer the same way. If the answers diverge, it isn’t the offer that’s unclear on the outside, it’s unclear on the inside, and then it becomes unclear on the outside all by itself.
In practice
In Genomlysningen we draw the rings for your company and look for where the pictures diverge. Sales’ picture of what delivery can handle, delivery’s picture of what the customer wants, the owner’s picture of what it’s worth. Each of them is right in their own corner, and still the decisions land in different places.
A new offer is rarely what’s needed. It’s the same offer, shaped by more people.