ZS helps an oil company shift conversations from price to value

The challenge

An oil company was having difficulty differentiating its offer and convincing potential customers to switch from their competitors. The client asked ZS to help inventory its different offerings and create compelling value propositions that demonstrated the total benefits a customer could realize from the offer.

The solution

ZS conducted a complete immersion into the client’s business to understand its customers and the roles of the various functional groups: sales, marketing and brand teams. By conducting interviews, reviewing documents and analyzing historical data, ZS developed a comprehensive set of offers.

Through targeted customer interviews and competitor insight, ZS determined the differentiating elements of each offer and created comprehensive value propositions. Where possible, ZS developed quantitative methods to show the actual value, beyond the core product and service, that the customer would receive by doing business with the oil company. Using customer segmentation data, we created meaningful groups of offers tailored to specific customer segments and validated the results with the sales force and the brand teams.

ZS involved all functional areas throughout the process, including the sales force and marketing teams, using workshops, reviews and training sessions. To help further ingrain the process with the sales force, ZS assisted with sales management training and coaching.

The impact

The sales force used the value propositions created by ZS to demonstrate total value to customers. Conversations with customers shifted from strictly price-based to value-based. This resulted in customers perceiving more value from our client’s offerings than from competitors’. The oil company achieved increased customer perception of value without the addition of new offers or increased cost to the client.