Today’s company offerings are the result of multiple, coordinated efforts to understand the market, identify opportunities, and develop solutions that best serve customers’ needs while differentiating from the competition. 
These efforts engage multiple resources in this day-to-day race for optimal solutions, leveraging skills from engineering, manufacturing, R&D, services, and many other teams, along with distribution channels and communication teams.
This section, which is a legacy of the “product” element from the early 4Ps of the marketing mix, is dedicated to value creation, where teams must identify and conceive the best solutions to design, introduce and deliver to customers.
To succeed, a broad range of skills must be coordinated effectively, with full team engagement to overcome numerous roadblocks along the way.
Specifically, this section will address value definition and focus on three essential topics: value creation, value pricing, and value selling. Understanding market opportunities, developing suitable marketable solutions, and pricing and selling those solutions are the core themes of this solution mix chapter.
Originally conceived in the 1960s, the marketing mix initially focused on products, with other elements limited to price, promotion, and placement. Interestingly, customers were not central to this 4 Ps paradigm. Competition was also viewed as an external force, with companies developing products “against” market uncertainties rather than “with” market opportunities.
Over time, the concept of the marketing mix evolved to place the customer at the center of the equation. Aligning the company to satisfy customer needs and expectations has led to strategies tailored to diverse market segments, enabling companies to better predict market trends and address future opportunities.
As this evolution continued, companies placed the customer at the core of their efforts, developing new marketing approaches. 
Marketing has advanced significantly since the introduction of the solution concept. The well-known quote by Harvard Business School Professor Theodore Levitt—“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”—exemplifies this shift from product selling to solution selling.
Furthermore, with a focus on solutions instead of products, many aspects of the customer experience are now considered more thoroughly. Financing, servicing, and other key factors have become integral parts of the solutions offered, allowing companies to differentiate more effectively from competitors and create additional value for both customers and the business.
With solution marketing, customers are placed at the center of solution development. The product remains a set of features and capabilities that are designed, produced, shipped, and serviced; however, it is now accompanied by a focus on the customer experience and the value customers gain from using it. In solution marketing, companies consider the customer’s perspective when making key investment decisions.
This shift has significantly changed marketing approaches. Roles within marketing have become more specialized, with some positions dedicated to promotion and communication, others focused on pricing, and still others on product or solution development.
New roles have also emerged, especially with the rise of digital channels and the need to adapt to diverse communication and sales channels.
Specialization in Product Marketing
In product marketing, specialization often depends on a company’s organizational structure. Some product marketing roles focus on engineering, manufacturing, and procurement to develop and optimize solutions, while others focus on promotion and communication to support sales teams.
Solution marketing requires a comprehensive understanding of market and customer dynamics to identify opportunities and assess risks. Solutions designed to address the market and create value are evaluated and refined through these methods, aiming to deliver development plans aligned with secure investment decisions.
These investment decisions, which generally have long-term impacts, must be approached with care. They should align with the company’s purpose and vision.
To guide these decisions, key business questions ensure they match the company’s priorities, such as:
These questions, specific to each company, are typically developed as part of the marketing plan, where strategy, mission, objectives, and values are discussed. They often relate to long-term growth, profitability, customer attraction and retention, and competitive differentiation. They act as a strategic compass for the company, helping to organize efforts that are limited by resources and structural constraints.
The Solution Marketing mix is covered in four chapters all centered under the theme of “value”:
Solution Value is a fundamental concept, crucial for understanding customer perception of a solution in comparison with others.
Value Creation includes techniques for creating solutions that are positioned to deliver the expected value to targeted market segments.
Value Pricing translates solutions into the pricing arena, where offerings are given their pricing strategy.
Value Selling involves sales and other teams helping customers understand the benefits of the solution for themselves and make informed purchase decisions.
Customer-centric solution marketing transforms traditional marketing by placing the customer at the core of product development and strategy. This approach involves coordinated efforts across various teams—engineering, manufacturing, and marketing—to create solutions that not only meet customer needs but also differentiate from competitors.
The evolution of the marketing mix emphasizes value creation, value pricing, and value selling, encouraging companies to focus on the entire customer experience. By addressing key business questions related to growth, competitive differentiation, and customer retention, organizations can effectively align their strategies with market opportunities.
The Solution Marketing mix is explored in four key areas: Solution Value, Value Creation, Value Pricing, and Value Selling, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of how to deliver value to customers.
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Solutions proposed in the marketplace come with a price that customers are willing to pay only when the perceived value aligns with the cost and effort of purchasing. When faced with multiple options, customers typically evaluate which one best matches their needs and constraints, seeking the optimal compromise. This is where value is assessed and determined. Evaluating and measuring value remains a complex task.
This chapter aims to clarify the concept of “Value” in its various dimensions and its application in marketing and sales. It strives to simplify this term, which holds multiple meanings in marketing. The definition of “Value” is closely tied to customer needs and expectations and exists even before a price is set. Since each customer—whether an individual, a company, or a group—is unique, the value they assign to a solution will also be unique at any given time. This uniqueness makes the role of sales and marketing professionals particularly engaging, as understanding customer needs and preferences helps in determining which solution, whether from their own company or a competitor, best meets the customer’s requirements.
The centerpiece of solution marketing—or product marketing for some—is value creation. 
This is where the needs and motivations of a company and its customers intersect. It is absolutely essential to invest time and effort in developing appropriate solutions that will delight customers. This requires a constant effort to assess and maximize the full portfolio of solutions by identifying growth opportunities and consolidating action plans to develop the right solutions and win customers, both now and in the future.
This chapter addresses two key questions: first, how to manage the portfolio of solutions, determining where to invest and the best path to bring those solutions to market; second, how a solution is developed and how value is demonstrated.
Value creation is a process with multiple steps and is certainly recurrent. In each iteration, new projects can be decided upon, and some may be terminated, while the majority of reviewed projects will continue until completion. These investment decisions will influence all company branches and functions, preparing solutions offerings and organizing the company to sell, deliver, and service those solutions.
Setting the right price for a solution is key. If the price is too high, the solution may fail to meet customers’ needs and expectations, leading to poor market positioning and potential failure. On the other hand, if the price is too low, the company may create pressure on competitors, forcing them to lower their prices as well. This can result in a challenging, less profitable market environment where all players struggle to meet profitability targets.
This chapter focuses on pricing and how companies can manage it to meet their objectives while ensuring customer satisfaction and encouraging repeat purchases when customers decide to renew or buy a new solution.
Sales is about building a mutually beneficial relationship between a buyer and a seller. In the past, this was often depicted as an unbalanced relationship, where the seller’s goal was to convince the customer to buy a product or service by any means necessary—essentially “pushing” a product to the buyer. 
Fortunately over time, this has evolved into a more balanced relationship, where both the seller and the customer stand on more equal ground, and customers can choose the product or service—a solution—that meets their needs. This more collaborative approach, known as “value selling,” naturally follows the two preceding steps of value creation and value pricing.
Marketing and Sales have evolved hand in hand gradually, developing solid techniques where the boundaries between the two can become blurred. In today’s environment, sales teams must demonstrate how their solution brings value to their customers and must also use marketing techniques to support and help customers determine their real needs.
As a result, salespeople now work less as isolated individuals and more as integral members of sales teams. In this short chapter, the objective is not to describe the latest sales techniques but rather to explore the various connections between marketing and sales and how each can learn from the other.
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