RESOURCE

Offer Design

When your technology story gets in the way of your value

WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES

Applied OLAP had a problem many B2B technology companies would envy.

​

Its flagship product, Dodeca, was proven enterprise software used by major organizations, including Nestle, Kroger, HBO, Mastercard, and Wells Fargo. Customers depended on it for critical financial reporting and analysis. The company had spent years building deep technical expertise and a loyal customer base.

​

But growth was proving difficult.

​

The company had built its reputation serving organizations using Oracle Essbase. Its sales efforts were largely focused on existing customers and established relationships. Reaching new buyers, particularly outside its traditional market, was a different challenge.

​

And the company's story wasn't helping.

​

Applied OLAP was a name that made perfect sense to the engineers who built the technology. OLAP stands for online analytical processing, the technology at the heart of the company's original offering.

​

But the finance executives the company needed to reach weren't shopping for online analytical processing. They wanted more reliable, efficient, and trustworthy financial processes.

​

The company's message explained what its technology could do. It was much less clear about why its best buyers should care.

​

When Dodeca's leadership came to Coefficient, they weren't looking for a new name. They wanted to grow. The name change came later. And that's what makes this story interesting.

​

The friction you don't know you're creating.

Every B2B technology company has a story it tells about itself. Over time, that story becomes so familiar internally that it's easy to forget how much work an unfamiliar buyer must do to understand it.

​

That work is friction. It often appears in three forms:

​

  • Market friction. You're speaking to one audience while the greatest opportunity lies with another.
  • Value friction. You're explaining what your product does without making clear why it matters.
  • Brand friction. Your identity makes buyers work harder to recognize or remember you.

Individually, each can slow a sale. Together, they can keep the right buyers from recognizing that you have something valuable to offer.

​

Applied OLAP had elements of all three.

​

But changing its name wouldn't solve the underlying problem. First, we needed to understand where its greatest value actually lived.

The customers you know aren't always the buyers you need.

One of our first discoveries was how little the company knew about the people who ultimately benefited from its software.

​

That may sound surprising for a business with longstanding enterprise customers. But most of its relationships were with technical specialists who administered the systems, understood the architecture, and appreciated Dodeca's capabilities.

​

The company knew its technology users extraordinarily well. It knew much less about the finance executives who depended on the results.

​

And those executives represented an important growth opportunity.

​

The old website described Dodeca as "EPM Applications Tailored To Fit Your Business," emphasizing its flexibility to build Essbase and spreadsheet-centric applications.

​

Accurate? Absolutely.

​

Compelling to a FP&A executive responsible for delivering an accurate forecast to the CFO? Not particularly.

​

Through customer interviews, we began to see the difference between what technical users appreciated and what finance leaders valued. Technical specialists valued the platform's capabilities. Finance leaders cared about the reliability, efficiency, and integrity of the financial processes those capabilities supported.

​

That distinction changed how we thought about Dodeca's ideal customer.

We weren't abandoning the technical audience. Their expertise remained essential to evaluating and implementing the software.

​

But the people who understood the technology best weren't necessarily the people with the most compelling reason to buy it.

​

If Dodeca wanted to expand beyond its established customer base, it needed a story that reached those buyers.

​

The real value was hiding behind the features.

Finance teams have a complicated relationship with Excel.

​

They love its familiarity, flexibility, and freedom. Spreadsheets let them work the way they want, analyze what they need, and respond quickly to changing demands. But those same qualities create problems when spreadsheets become the backbone of enterprise financial processes.

​

Manual data transfers. Multiple workbook versions. Broken formulas. Inconsistent reports. Hours spent checking numbers instead of interpreting them. And hanging over it all is a question that matters enormously to a finance leader: Can I trust these numbers?

​

Our customer conversations helped reveal a more compelling way to express Dodeca's value. The product wasn't simply a flexible platform for building financial applications. It helped organizations preserve the spreadsheet experience their teams valued while introducing the control and reliability their financial processes required.

​

Instead of asking buyers to appreciate its technical capabilities, Dodeca could connect those capabilities to an outcome finance leaders were already responsible for delivering: confidence.

​

Confidence that the numbers were right. Confidence that financial processes were under control. Confidence that reports going to the CFO or board could be trusted.

​

That insight became the foundation of a sharper promise: Confidence behind every cell.

​

And a more immediately recognizable expression of the offer: Keep the spreadsheets you love. Gain the control you need.

​

Neither statement explains how Dodeca works.

​

Both help the right buyer understand why it matters.

​

That's the difference between describing a product and communicating its value.

​

A sharper value proposition opened a bigger market.

But changing the message was only part of the opportunity.

​

Dodeca's business had historically been closely associated with Oracle Essbase. That heritage provided credibility within its established market, but it also created a limiting perception: Dodeca was principally a solution for organizations already invested in that technology.

​

If the company wanted to reach a broader market, it needed more than a broader message. Working with Dodeca's leadership, we helped shape a cloud-based managed service offering built around its existing on-premises solution.

​

This created another way for customers to access Dodeca's capabilities and supported expansion beyond its traditional Oracle-centered market. More importantly, it connected three strategic decisions: whom to pursue, what value to offer them, and how to deliver it.

​

Sometimes the value your best buyers want is already present in your product, waiting to be expressed more clearly. Other times, understanding those buyers reveals an opportunity to reshape the offer itself.

​

For Dodeca, it was both.

​

Once the value was clear, the name became obvious.

Only after clarifying the buyer, the value, and the offer did we turn to the company's identity.

​

Applied OLAP reflected the company's technical heritage. But that heritage was precisely what the new positioning needed to move beyond.

​

The name introduced the company through a technology rather than a customer outcome. It reinforced an association with a narrower market at the very moment Dodeca was preparing to expand.

​

Meanwhile, the market already knew its flagship product as Dodeca.

​

The company was asking buyers to connect two identities when one would do.

​

So I recommended that Applied OLAP become Dodeca Software.

​

It wasn't an obvious decision for everyone. A company name carries history, identity, and a founder's investment in what the business has become. Interestingly, after the recommendation, several team members told me they had favored a name change for years.

​

The market had been giving the company a signal. The new value strategy finally gave it a compelling reason to act.

​

The decision wasn't about finding a more fashionable name. It was about removing another obstacle between the buyer and the value the company offered.

​

Drillbridge, another product in the family, retained its established name. There was no reason to erase useful recognition simply to make everything uniform.

​

The objective was clarity, not cosmetic consistency.

​

A name should follow your value, not lead it.

​

But a new name was only one part of bringing that value to market. The company's website also needed to change. It had been built around explaining the technology to people who already understood it. Now it needed to engage finance leaders who might be encountering Dodeca for the first time.

​

Making the new value visible.

That meant rethinking more than the website's copy. We needed to create an experience that immediately communicated Dodeca's value to finance leaders, supported by a modern visual design that reflected the sophistication of the software and the enterprise customers it serves.

​

The new Dodeca website leads with the value finance leaders are looking for rather than the technology behind it. It makes the case for preserving Excel's flexibility while gaining greater control, reliability, and confidence in financial processes.

​

The website became the place where the new positioning, value proposition, and brand identity came together.

​

And early signs are encouraging. Prospect conversations, customer engagement, and particularly interest from potential partners are increasing.

It's too early to attribute commercial results to any single change. But Dodeca is having conversations that its previous market position made harder to initiate.

"Coefficient helped us see our company through our customers' eyes. That changed how we think about our market, our offering, and how we communicate our value."

— Tim Tow, Founder, Dodeca Software

​

Where is your value getting lost?

Not every company needs a new name. But nearly every growing B2B technology company should periodically question whether its market-facing story still reflects where its greatest value lies.

​

Three questions are worth asking:

  1. Are we speaking to the buyers who value us most? Or are we still telling our story to the audience that first embraced our technology?
  2. Are we communicating what our customers value, or simply explaining what our product does? There's a difference between understanding a capability and recognizing a reason to buy.
  3. What makes it harder than necessary for our best buyers to recognize our value? Our name? Our message? Our offer? Or assumptions about the market that we haven't revisited?

These questions are at the heart of our Dynamic Value Design™ approach. We help B2B technology companies select the customers who value them most, shape their offer around what those customers care about, and sharpen how that value is communicated.

Sometimes the result is a new value proposition. Sometimes it's a different offer or a more focused market strategy. And sometimes, as with Dodeca, it leads to a new company name.

​

But the objective is always the same: make it easier for your best buyers to recognize the value you can deliver and say yes.

​

If you're wondering whether your name, your message, or your offer is creating friction for your best buyers, book a strategy call with us. We'll take a look at how your value comes across today and share what we find, whether you choose to work with us or not.

​

WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES

Leary Gates is a strategic advisor and co-founder of Coefficient, the value design firm helping B2B companies rethink what they sell and how they grow. He writes the Strategic CEO newsletter, a weekly exploration of leadership, strategy, and the next growth curve.

Like what you’re reading?

Get these sent to your inbox. Spam free.

RESOURCE

Offer Design

When your technology story gets in the way of your value

WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES

Applied OLAP had a problem many B2B technology companies would envy.

​

Its flagship product, Dodeca, was proven enterprise software used by major organizations, including Nestle, Kroger, HBO, Mastercard, and Wells Fargo. Customers depended on it for critical financial reporting and analysis. The company had spent years building deep technical expertise and a loyal customer base.

​

But growth was proving difficult.

​

The company had built its reputation serving organizations using Oracle Essbase. Its sales efforts were largely focused on existing customers and established relationships. Reaching new buyers, particularly outside its traditional market, was a different challenge.

​

And the company's story wasn't helping.

​

Applied OLAP was a name that made perfect sense to the engineers who built the technology. OLAP stands for online analytical processing, the technology at the heart of the company's original offering.

​

But the finance executives the company needed to reach weren't shopping for online analytical processing. They wanted more reliable, efficient, and trustworthy financial processes.

​

The company's message explained what its technology could do. It was much less clear about why its best buyers should care.

​

When Dodeca's leadership came to Coefficient, they weren't looking for a new name. They wanted to grow. The name change came later. And that's what makes this story interesting.

​

The friction you don't know you're creating.

Every B2B technology company has a story it tells about itself. Over time, that story becomes so familiar internally that it's easy to forget how much work an unfamiliar buyer must do to understand it.

​

That work is friction. It often appears in three forms:

​

  • Market friction. You're speaking to one audience while the greatest opportunity lies with another.
  • Value friction. You're explaining what your product does without making clear why it matters.
  • Brand friction. Your identity makes buyers work harder to recognize or remember you.

Individually, each can slow a sale. Together, they can keep the right buyers from recognizing that you have something valuable to offer.

​

Applied OLAP had elements of all three.

​

But changing its name wouldn't solve the underlying problem. First, we needed to understand where its greatest value actually lived.

The customers you know aren't always the buyers you need.

One of our first discoveries was how little the company knew about the people who ultimately benefited from its software.

​

That may sound surprising for a business with longstanding enterprise customers. But most of its relationships were with technical specialists who administered the systems, understood the architecture, and appreciated Dodeca's capabilities.

​

The company knew its technology users extraordinarily well. It knew much less about the finance executives who depended on the results.

​

And those executives represented an important growth opportunity.

​

The old website described Dodeca as "EPM Applications Tailored To Fit Your Business," emphasizing its flexibility to build Essbase and spreadsheet-centric applications.

​

Accurate? Absolutely.

​

Compelling to a FP&A executive responsible for delivering an accurate forecast to the CFO? Not particularly.

​

Through customer interviews, we began to see the difference between what technical users appreciated and what finance leaders valued. Technical specialists valued the platform's capabilities. Finance leaders cared about the reliability, efficiency, and integrity of the financial processes those capabilities supported.

​

That distinction changed how we thought about Dodeca's ideal customer.

We weren't abandoning the technical audience. Their expertise remained essential to evaluating and implementing the software.

​

But the people who understood the technology best weren't necessarily the people with the most compelling reason to buy it.

​

If Dodeca wanted to expand beyond its established customer base, it needed a story that reached those buyers.

​

The real value was hiding behind the features.

Finance teams have a complicated relationship with Excel.

​

They love its familiarity, flexibility, and freedom. Spreadsheets let them work the way they want, analyze what they need, and respond quickly to changing demands. But those same qualities create problems when spreadsheets become the backbone of enterprise financial processes.

​

Manual data transfers. Multiple workbook versions. Broken formulas. Inconsistent reports. Hours spent checking numbers instead of interpreting them. And hanging over it all is a question that matters enormously to a finance leader: Can I trust these numbers?

​

Our customer conversations helped reveal a more compelling way to express Dodeca's value. The product wasn't simply a flexible platform for building financial applications. It helped organizations preserve the spreadsheet experience their teams valued while introducing the control and reliability their financial processes required.

​

Instead of asking buyers to appreciate its technical capabilities, Dodeca could connect those capabilities to an outcome finance leaders were already responsible for delivering: confidence.

​

Confidence that the numbers were right. Confidence that financial processes were under control. Confidence that reports going to the CFO or board could be trusted.

​

That insight became the foundation of a sharper promise: Confidence behind every cell.

​

And a more immediately recognizable expression of the offer: Keep the spreadsheets you love. Gain the control you need.

​

Neither statement explains how Dodeca works.

​

Both help the right buyer understand why it matters.

​

That's the difference between describing a product and communicating its value.

​

A sharper value proposition opened a bigger market.

But changing the message was only part of the opportunity.

​

Dodeca's business had historically been closely associated with Oracle Essbase. That heritage provided credibility within its established market, but it also created a limiting perception: Dodeca was principally a solution for organizations already invested in that technology.

​

If the company wanted to reach a broader market, it needed more than a broader message. Working with Dodeca's leadership, we helped shape a cloud-based managed service offering built around its existing on-premises solution.

​

This created another way for customers to access Dodeca's capabilities and supported expansion beyond its traditional Oracle-centered market. More importantly, it connected three strategic decisions: whom to pursue, what value to offer them, and how to deliver it.

​

Sometimes the value your best buyers want is already present in your product, waiting to be expressed more clearly. Other times, understanding those buyers reveals an opportunity to reshape the offer itself.

​

For Dodeca, it was both.

​

Once the value was clear, the name became obvious.

Only after clarifying the buyer, the value, and the offer did we turn to the company's identity.

​

Applied OLAP reflected the company's technical heritage. But that heritage was precisely what the new positioning needed to move beyond.

​

The name introduced the company through a technology rather than a customer outcome. It reinforced an association with a narrower market at the very moment Dodeca was preparing to expand.

​

Meanwhile, the market already knew its flagship product as Dodeca.

​

The company was asking buyers to connect two identities when one would do.

​

So I recommended that Applied OLAP become Dodeca Software.

​

It wasn't an obvious decision for everyone. A company name carries history, identity, and a founder's investment in what the business has become. Interestingly, after the recommendation, several team members told me they had favored a name change for years.

​

The market had been giving the company a signal. The new value strategy finally gave it a compelling reason to act.

​

The decision wasn't about finding a more fashionable name. It was about removing another obstacle between the buyer and the value the company offered.

​

Drillbridge, another product in the family, retained its established name. There was no reason to erase useful recognition simply to make everything uniform.

​

The objective was clarity, not cosmetic consistency.

​

A name should follow your value, not lead it.

​

But a new name was only one part of bringing that value to market. The company's website also needed to change. It had been built around explaining the technology to people who already understood it. Now it needed to engage finance leaders who might be encountering Dodeca for the first time.

​

Making the new value visible.

That meant rethinking more than the website's copy. We needed to create an experience that immediately communicated Dodeca's value to finance leaders, supported by a modern visual design that reflected the sophistication of the software and the enterprise customers it serves.

​

The new Dodeca website leads with the value finance leaders are looking for rather than the technology behind it. It makes the case for preserving Excel's flexibility while gaining greater control, reliability, and confidence in financial processes.

​

The website became the place where the new positioning, value proposition, and brand identity came together.

​

And early signs are encouraging. Prospect conversations, customer engagement, and particularly interest from potential partners are increasing.

It's too early to attribute commercial results to any single change. But Dodeca is having conversations that its previous market position made harder to initiate.

"Coefficient helped us see our company through our customers' eyes. That changed how we think about our market, our offering, and how we communicate our value."— Tim Tow, Founder, Dodeca Software

​

Where is your value getting lost?

Not every company needs a new name. But nearly every growing B2B technology company should periodically question whether its market-facing story still reflects where its greatest value lies.

​

Three questions are worth asking:

  1. Are we speaking to the buyers who value us most? Or are we still telling our story to the audience that first embraced our technology?
  2. Are we communicating what our customers value, or simply explaining what our product does? There's a difference between understanding a capability and recognizing a reason to buy.
  3. What makes it harder than necessary for our best buyers to recognize our value? Our name? Our message? Our offer? Or assumptions about the market that we haven't revisited?

These questions are at the heart of our Dynamic Value Design™ approach. We help B2B technology companies select the customers who value them most, shape their offer around what those customers care about, and sharpen how that value is communicated.

Sometimes the result is a new value proposition. Sometimes it's a different offer or a more focused market strategy. And sometimes, as with Dodeca, it leads to a new company name.

​

But the objective is always the same: make it easier for your best buyers to recognize the value you can deliver and say yes.

​

If you're wondering whether your name, your message, or your offer is creating friction for your best buyers, book a strategy call with us. We'll take a look at how your value comes across today and share what we find, whether you choose to work with us or not.

​

WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES

Leary Gates is a strategic advisor and co-founder of Coefficient, the value design firm helping B2B companies rethink what they sell and how they grow. He writes the Strategic CEO newsletter, a weekly exploration of leadership, strategy, and the next growth curve.

Like what you’re reading?

Get these sent to your inbox. Spam free.

RESOURCE

Offer Design

When your technology story gets in the way of your value

WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES

Applied OLAP had a problem many B2B technology companies would envy.

​

Its flagship product, Dodeca, was proven enterprise software used by major organizations, including Nestle, Kroger, HBO, Mastercard, and Wells Fargo. Customers depended on it for critical financial reporting and analysis. The company had spent years building deep technical expertise and a loyal customer base.

​

But growth was proving difficult.

​

The company had built its reputation serving organizations using Oracle Essbase. Its sales efforts were largely focused on existing customers and established relationships. Reaching new buyers, particularly outside its traditional market, was a different challenge.

​

And the company's story wasn't helping.

​

Applied OLAP was a name that made perfect sense to the engineers who built the technology. OLAP stands for online analytical processing, the technology at the heart of the company's original offering.

​

But the finance executives the company needed to reach weren't shopping for online analytical processing. They wanted more reliable, efficient, and trustworthy financial processes.

​

The company's message explained what its technology could do. It was much less clear about why its best buyers should care.

​

When Dodeca's leadership came to Coefficient, they weren't looking for a new name. They wanted to grow. The name change came later. And that's what makes this story interesting.

​

The friction you don't know you're creating.

Every B2B technology company has a story it tells about itself. Over time, that story becomes so familiar internally that it's easy to forget how much work an unfamiliar buyer must do to understand it.

​

That work is friction. It often appears in three forms:

​

  • Market friction. You're speaking to one audience while the greatest opportunity lies with another.
  • Value friction. You're explaining what your product does without making clear why it matters.
  • Brand friction. Your identity makes buyers work harder to recognize or remember you.

Individually, each can slow a sale. Together, they can keep the right buyers from recognizing that you have something valuable to offer.

​

Applied OLAP had elements of all three.

​

But changing its name wouldn't solve the underlying problem. First, we needed to understand where its greatest value actually lived.

The customers you know aren't always the buyers you need.

One of our first discoveries was how little the company knew about the people who ultimately benefited from its software.

​

That may sound surprising for a business with longstanding enterprise customers. But most of its relationships were with technical specialists who administered the systems, understood the architecture, and appreciated Dodeca's capabilities.

​

The company knew its technology users extraordinarily well. It knew much less about the finance executives who depended on the results.

​

And those executives represented an important growth opportunity.

​

The old website described Dodeca as "EPM Applications Tailored To Fit Your Business," emphasizing its flexibility to build Essbase and spreadsheet-centric applications.

​

Accurate? Absolutely.

​

Compelling to a FP&A executive responsible for delivering an accurate forecast to the CFO? Not particularly.

​

Through customer interviews, we began to see the difference between what technical users appreciated and what finance leaders valued. Technical specialists valued the platform's capabilities. Finance leaders cared about the reliability, efficiency, and integrity of the financial processes those capabilities supported.

​

That distinction changed how we thought about Dodeca's ideal customer.

We weren't abandoning the technical audience. Their expertise remained essential to evaluating and implementing the software.

​

But the people who understood the technology best weren't necessarily the people with the most compelling reason to buy it.

​

If Dodeca wanted to expand beyond its established customer base, it needed a story that reached those buyers.

​

The real value was hiding behind the features.

Finance teams have a complicated relationship with Excel.

​

They love its familiarity, flexibility, and freedom. Spreadsheets let them work the way they want, analyze what they need, and respond quickly to changing demands. But those same qualities create problems when spreadsheets become the backbone of enterprise financial processes.

​

Manual data transfers. Multiple workbook versions. Broken formulas. Inconsistent reports. Hours spent checking numbers instead of interpreting them. And hanging over it all is a question that matters enormously to a finance leader: Can I trust these numbers?

​

Our customer conversations helped reveal a more compelling way to express Dodeca's value. The product wasn't simply a flexible platform for building financial applications. It helped organizations preserve the spreadsheet experience their teams valued while introducing the control and reliability their financial processes required.

​

Instead of asking buyers to appreciate its technical capabilities, Dodeca could connect those capabilities to an outcome finance leaders were already responsible for delivering: confidence.

​

Confidence that the numbers were right. Confidence that financial processes were under control. Confidence that reports going to the CFO or board could be trusted.

​

That insight became the foundation of a sharper promise: Confidence behind every cell.

​

And a more immediately recognizable expression of the offer: Keep the spreadsheets you love. Gain the control you need.

​

Neither statement explains how Dodeca works.

​

Both help the right buyer understand why it matters.

​

That's the difference between describing a product and communicating its value.

​

A sharper value proposition opened a bigger market.

But changing the message was only part of the opportunity.

​

Dodeca's business had historically been closely associated with Oracle Essbase. That heritage provided credibility within its established market, but it also created a limiting perception: Dodeca was principally a solution for organizations already invested in that technology.

​

If the company wanted to reach a broader market, it needed more than a broader message. Working with Dodeca's leadership, we helped shape a cloud-based managed service offering built around its existing on-premises solution.

​

This created another way for customers to access Dodeca's capabilities and supported expansion beyond its traditional Oracle-centered market. More importantly, it connected three strategic decisions: whom to pursue, what value to offer them, and how to deliver it.

​

Sometimes the value your best buyers want is already present in your product, waiting to be expressed more clearly. Other times, understanding those buyers reveals an opportunity to reshape the offer itself.

​

For Dodeca, it was both.

​

Once the value was clear, the name became obvious.

Only after clarifying the buyer, the value, and the offer did we turn to the company's identity.

​

Applied OLAP reflected the company's technical heritage. But that heritage was precisely what the new positioning needed to move beyond.

​

The name introduced the company through a technology rather than a customer outcome. It reinforced an association with a narrower market at the very moment Dodeca was preparing to expand.

​

Meanwhile, the market already knew its flagship product as Dodeca.

​

The company was asking buyers to connect two identities when one would do.

​

So I recommended that Applied OLAP become Dodeca Software.

​

It wasn't an obvious decision for everyone. A company name carries history, identity, and a founder's investment in what the business has become. Interestingly, after the recommendation, several team members told me they had favored a name change for years.

​

The market had been giving the company a signal. The new value strategy finally gave it a compelling reason to act.

​

The decision wasn't about finding a more fashionable name. It was about removing another obstacle between the buyer and the value the company offered.

​

Drillbridge, another product in the family, retained its established name. There was no reason to erase useful recognition simply to make everything uniform.

​

The objective was clarity, not cosmetic consistency.

​

A name should follow your value, not lead it.

​

But a new name was only one part of bringing that value to market. The company's website also needed to change. It had been built around explaining the technology to people who already understood it. Now it needed to engage finance leaders who might be encountering Dodeca for the first time.

​

Making the new value visible.

That meant rethinking more than the website's copy. We needed to create an experience that immediately communicated Dodeca's value to finance leaders, supported by a modern visual design that reflected the sophistication of the software and the enterprise customers it serves.

​

The new Dodeca website leads with the value finance leaders are looking for rather than the technology behind it. It makes the case for preserving Excel's flexibility while gaining greater control, reliability, and confidence in financial processes.

​

The website became the place where the new positioning, value proposition, and brand identity came together.

​

And early signs are encouraging. Prospect conversations, customer engagement, and particularly interest from potential partners are increasing.

It's too early to attribute commercial results to any single change. But Dodeca is having conversations that its previous market position made harder to initiate.

"Coefficient helped us see our company through our customers' eyes. That changed how we think about our market, our offering, and how we communicate our value."— Tim Tow, Founder, Dodeca Software

​

Where is your value getting lost?

Not every company needs a new name. But nearly every growing B2B technology company should periodically question whether its market-facing story still reflects where its greatest value lies.

​

Three questions are worth asking:

  1. Are we speaking to the buyers who value us most? Or are we still telling our story to the audience that first embraced our technology?
  2. Are we communicating what our customers value, or simply explaining what our product does? There's a difference between understanding a capability and recognizing a reason to buy.
  3. What makes it harder than necessary for our best buyers to recognize our value? Our name? Our message? Our offer? Or assumptions about the market that we haven't revisited?

These questions are at the heart of our Dynamic Value Design™ approach. We help B2B technology companies select the customers who value them most, shape their offer around what those customers care about, and sharpen how that value is communicated.

Sometimes the result is a new value proposition. Sometimes it's a different offer or a more focused market strategy. And sometimes, as with Dodeca, it leads to a new company name.

​

But the objective is always the same: make it easier for your best buyers to recognize the value you can deliver and say yes.

​

If you're wondering whether your name, your message, or your offer is creating friction for your best buyers, book a strategy call with us. We'll take a look at how your value comes across today and share what we find, whether you choose to work with us or not.

​

WRITTEN BY: LEARY GATES

Leary Gates is a strategic advisor and co-founder of Coefficient, the value design firm helping B2B companies rethink what they sell and how they grow. He writes the Strategic CEO newsletter, a weekly exploration of leadership, strategy, and the next growth curve.

Like what you’re reading?

Get these sent to your inbox. Spam free.