Value

Evaluations start top-down by coming from a clear strategic direction from the management team or bottoms-up when a specific product no longer covers all needed use cases or by the hand of users or teams, and value delivery, before it's captured, is at the core of a success evaluation (when a product is purchased).

When value is delivered fast, and the product delivers on its promise (value proposition) during the evaluation journey, paying is seen as a logical step not a barrier for further usage or adoption.

“So it needs to be an immediate gratification in the sense that you will be able to learn and start from something simple into understanding what is the future (with the product). You will be able to build complex things if need be. For example, by going into an expert mode and you have to code something more complex.” - Cuco, Head of Connected Retail Product and Engineering

“It wasn't only me evaluating… So, that's actually evaluating the tool partially to buy them. In the case of Miro, we started using that for our own needs (but work related), not for the company, and we didn't even think about upgrading it, but when more and more people started seeing (and using it) that it reached the Head of our Department, so then [Head of Department]

started to make it official saying, “ Okay. Who is going to be our point of contact with Miro?”

“Who are the people we're going to invite?” - Namex, Principal Product Designer

The same happens when value is continuously delivered while in a free product evaluation, or for free after an initial purchase.

“I took a ton of value out of SEMrush and we bought SEMrush. I saw that they have these onboarding calls with the SEO experts from SEMrush. I subscribed for one of those calls. It was a free call after I paid. I spent one hour talking to this Russian SEO lady, who taught me a ton of stuff, but also about SEO, in general, that I took so many notes. I remember that call 'til today because it helps expand what I was getting out of the product. I came out of that call feeling,

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"Oh, shit. I should have done this before." It's like the Matrix effect, right? Now I know kung-fu, and I started working based on that hour a lot. That's an example.”- Jujo, Product Growth Senior Director

But when the perception of value is undermined by friction, value delivery is also undermined, and a purchase is jeopardized.

“Yes. If I go back to the Amplitude example versus SiteSpect, if I hadn't been using Amplitude, I would have given up, right? My experience with them was really bad. The product is a blank canvas and you need to do a lot of work to start seeing the value. For that, you need help because the documentation sucks.” - Jujo, Product Growth Senior Director

Trust also plays a central role tied to the capacity to see, or not, the value delivered by a product.

“Not having access to the product or any kind of evaluation or PoC and jumping to a commitment of one or two years, that's kind of hard to do today. I would say that (not being able to try the product and see its value) will show lack of trust from the product to the market.

It's not that the product is bad. Most of the time, it is because at least in my mind, the company is selling so much that they don't want to focus on having new customers or the product is so specific that will be hard to evaluate in a short time or in self-service…I can subscribe for a service that is more than 50K without having a rep. If I'm using the product, I really trust the product.” - Savat, Head of Competitive Intelligence

“If I could trust that they would not disclose the data I was getting there, I could have started applying it as the departmental use case. The challenge there was that the data and the information that we were gathering were highly classified or kept confidential for our company goals. And essentially, I knew that it was a no-go in that regard. We couldn't release the budget for it but it will be another tool. Not compliant with what we have and the regular processes.

But the key obstacle was that I did not trust that we could use their tool while safeguarding the company secrets and key information.” - Vidade, Business and Process Analyst Manager Human assistance can also contribute to better understanding and leverage the value delivered by the product before committing to a purchase.

“Superhuman is an email client. It's an expensive email client. You pay aounr $30 a month. I think you should subscribe and pay a month so that you can get the full experience. They will onboard every single person with a half an hour call. Before you sign up, they ask you a ton of questions. They qualify you, and some people don't get access, some people do. When you manage to get through, they will go with you on a Zoom call and they will run an onboarding call on your email box. You share your screen, you install Superhuman, and they go through your inbox. They say, "Don't clean up your inbox before you join. Join us with the inbox as it is.

If you're getting too many emails, if you're disorganized with your email, and you fail to follow up on stuff, you'll get out of that call with five or six good tips of productivity that adapt to your needs, because they run the onboarding on your email and then you can follow up with questions. "Hey, how do I do this? How do I do that?" They will reply within the hour. It's absolutely impressive. Impressive onboarding.” - Jujo, Product Growth Senior Director

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“When you step up a little bit above the norm, and you show some potential, then they can engage their resources and say, "Look, let's try to see if there's growth potential there and that it can be mutually beneficial, right? I mean, ultimately, everyone thinks their product will be beneficial to their consumers. It's just how much effort I can put to each consumer to make sure that they're having it. In this example, I think it worked because we were happy where we were.

They reached a good point because we were growing fast. It's at that point where, if I keep buying this online, no volume discounts, and so on, I'm wasting money. They managed to get you to an even higher price point, but you're effectively happier because of the way they engaged and the service they're providing.” - Fonzo, Digital Strategy and Architecture Manger Decision to purchase looks to be tied not only to value delivered but to how it is delivered. If it is fast, close to the evaluation start, tied to needs, and continuous, not only the purchase will happen faster but a higher value is captured (by the product’s seller). The gap between perceived value and value delivered is eliminated. There is a shift to the left in value delivered (closer to the start of evaluation) and value captured shifts to the right (after value is delivered and the product is started to be adopted).

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