Radical Value ISBN: 9781733996303, Goodrich Publishing, copyright and written by Mark Boundy.
Sub-titled Elevate your company – and career – by unleashing the power within customer centricity, the author explains that “any company exists to generate higher value than it costs to deliver it.” Thus, “Customer satisfaction is a powerful, highly relevant metric. It’s just not a great in-game compass. Customer’s value is the important criteria.” He then proceeds with his 5 part evaluation. Part 1 contains 2 chapters where he initiates his proposal that the purpose of business is the creation of value and explains “what is value”. Part 2 follows explaining why value culture works with chapters 3 and 4 providing radically focused company basics and the critical aspects of focused customer conversations. Part 3 offers “to know your customer’s business, ye must know business” and proceeds in the next 3 chapters to describe the need to become an expert in your customer’s business, financial acumen for the “No-mathelte”, and how one must look for value through the customer’s eyes. Part 4 concentrates on practical ‘value-mining’ tools for customer-facing roles in chapter 8 by “finding value from your differentiation out” and 9 explaining that “probability happens at the top line”. Part 5 “Are you ready to be radical?” terminates the presentation with Chapters 10, 11 and 12 explaining how sellers are enabled to focus on value; “a day in the life” examining “what’s different about a radically focused organization”; and how this ‘different’ focus changes your customer relationships.
Discussion: The author states in several ways that “Customers don’t buy products or services, they buy the outcome they anticipate those products and/or services deliver. And, he has set forth his advice, as synopsized above, the manner in which this feature translates into the customer’s value and how to interpret and utilize it in what he describes as a radically different approach. From accompanying statements of praise for the author’s approach by individuals highly positioned in successful businesses, the author has been eminently successful in providing a ‘radical’ guide to focus on expectations of their customers. Or to rephrase, to re-align a business and all workers in each department to realize the basic need for every selling business to understand they are in business specifically to satisfy the values their customers possess. This reader concurs with their conclusions. However and apparently unfortunately, from my perspective as an individual not engaged in ‘business per se’ but rather one whose interests range eclectically, a certain personal disappointment results. If this basic message already exists, why does the author need to provide such lengthy description for justification of its use? And why is the material he has provided so radical? The material is interesting and seemingly delivers exactly what is needed, and assumingly considered radical, from the perspective of individuals who may be in the same old daily routine where poor habits develop unnoticed and the company’s main thrust ‘becomes somewhat frayed around the edges’. But from a total ‘outsider’s perspective, the message hardly seems ‘radical’ and especially if it is so essential. Thus, my apologies to the author and others closely involved in the activities described. My comments arise from the perspective of a reader whose wide range of interests include knowledge of ‘business’ and its various aspects, BUT from a complete unfamiliarity with the daily ‘grind’ it entails which seems, in turn, to lead to numerous ‘glitches’.
3* 5*material; -2 with apologies to author/others involved from an interested ‘outsider’.