Chicago, 2004 - Economists have reported for decades that value is the primary decision-driver in the purchase of goods and services. Yet according to Jeff Thull, founder and CEO of Prime Resource Group, more than half of the value promises that business-to-business sellers make to customers are never fulfilled, resulting in what he calls a "value gap." Most customers don't understand the full value of the product or service they've purchased, how to implement it, or how it makes their work easier or more effective. Consequently those customers don't develop the kind of strong loyalty that sellers need in today's ultra-competitive marketplace.

"The value gap is the high-cost disconnect between the value that products and services are designed to deliver to customers and the value that customers actually achieve," Thull says. "Too many sellers act as if they have fulfilled the value promise when the solution has been delivered and installed. In reality, their promise is fulfilled only when the value is achieved within the buyer's environment and not until then."

In his new book The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale (Dearborn Trade Publishing, January 2005, $25, hardcover), Thull offers strategies for sellers to help customers understand and achieve the full value of the products and services they have purchased. He leads sellers through the major components and processes of the value promise system-creation, marketing, selling, implementation, and measurement of whole solutions, and explains how to fully deliver on their promise to customers.

Readers will learn to recognize and break through these five common barriers to realizing value:

• The Relevancy barrier - Sellers unilaterally define the solution and thus are unable to create value that is relevant to customers.
• The Inflation barrier - Sellers sidestep their duty to inform customers of the implementation hurdles common to their solutions.
• The Comprehension barrier - Sellers incorrectly assume that customers are capable of understanding their complex problems and the complex solutions being offered.
• The Dilution barrier - Sellers accept the widely-used, price-based commodity approach to buying--and allow customers to unknowingly strip the value out of their solutions.
• The Implementation barrier - Sellers avoid value accountability and blame customers for solution failures.

Because his disciplined, "all-hands" approach requires an organization-wide effort, Thull provides tactical solutions for involving all teams connected to the customer - R&D, marketing, sales and service. Sprinkled with case studies of successful corporations worldwide who have used his whole solutions approach to dramatically increase profits,
The Prime Solution will help providers of complex products and services gain a continual competitive advantage in a market inundated with unfulfilled promises - and unhappy customers.

Jeff Thull is the founder and CEO of Prime Resource Group, a sales and marketing performance consulting firm that delivers programs to more than 10,000 people every year. His consulting firm is unique in that it develops high-performance sales and marketing management solutions for organizations involved in complex sales. Thull is a compelling, entertaining, and thought-provoking speaker, with a track record of over 2,500 speeches and seminars to blue chip companies around the world. He is also the author of Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High.

The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale ($25.00, 240 pages, 6 x 9, hardcover, ISBN: 0-7931-9522-5) is available at neighborhood and online booksellers or by calling 800-876-0378.

Abstract:
Learn how to close the Value Gap from "The Prime Solution" by Jeff Thull of Prime Resource Group.