DPV Group

“Important business books are a rarity and this one, from Michael Lanning, is a gem. Lanning created what is arguably the most important concept in the history of marketing – the Value Proposition – and here he takes his seminal ideas deeper and further. This is a blueprint for organizational success – an architecture for building a winning company.”

“Delivering Profitable Value defines the corporate mindset that will distinguish the new millennium’s winners from the losers. Michael Lanning’s book should be required reading by any management team that wants to know how to choose and define their business’s Value Proposition, provide it, and communicate it effectively.”

“Mike Lanning’s notion of the Value Proposition – of managing a business entirely to deliver one, and of discovering the right one by becoming the customer – represents truly original and exciting thinking. I would urge any manager to thoroughly read and use this terrific book.”

“This book is tremendously important. While DPV is relevant to a wide universe of businesses, I believe Mike Lanning’s framework and methodology are an especially exciting opportunity for commodity businesses. It shows managers how they can creatively transform these businesses by searching for and using a profound understanding of customers and of their businesses.”

“I’d highly recommend putting this book to good use immediately… or risk having your competition use it first and gain a competitive edge in truly understanding what it will take to attract, and more importantly retain, profitable customers… has no equal in understanding and explaining how to develop unique, competitive ways in which your company can redefine itself into a genuinely customer-oriented organization… not just the marketing department but the ENTIRE company. Delivering Profitable Value contains groundbreaking thinking and tools to understand what your customers really need instead of what outdated marketing and business techniques mistakenly may lead you to think.”

“Listening to the customer, customer focus & customer oriented have become business cliches that have hidden the value of really understanding customer needs and the complexity in profitably delivering them. This book clearly demonstrates both the many years that Michael Lanning has drawn from front line work in this area and the keen intellect that he has used to abstract the learning from these experiences. This is not another book simply preaching the obvious importance of understanding customer needs. Rather, it’s a realistic, practical guide on how you can achieve truly insightful understanding of those needs, and then how you can translate those insights into profitable business growth.”

“… Unlike most books related to value which have little structure or focus, this one understands the importance of the ecosystem in which your customer exists… I liked the series of steps for comparing offerings to customers. The book uses lots of interesting examples, many of which are new to me. But each was easy to understand… I was particularly impressed by the discussion of the Value Proposition at Southwest Airlines. Only Nuts! and this book have a good description. Books by well-known academics are amazingly dense on that subject… You also get some good information on advanced techniques for going beyond the limits of normal market research. This includes actually taking the time to become the end user for your product or service, at their location…also observing behavior with videos and following up with directed questions. Most companies use neither technique. Mr. Lanning started out his career at P & G and has developed from that company’s fine approach to marketing and innovation a more generalized way of thinking that can be used by almost any organization. That is well done. His framework is robust in that it allows you to compare economic benefits (like a lower price, or being able to replace some labor in your manufacturing process) and non-economic ones (like less stress) with competitive offerings… a very well done book.”