A global company with a strong, differentiated portfolio faced rising pressure from lower-priced substitutes in a price-sensitive market. Competitors were winning the narrative with “good enough at a lower price” — and the premium positioning was eroding into feature-and-price comparison.
The challenge
Although the company had strong products and capabilities, the competitive conversation had collapsed onto features, functional equivalence and price. The task was to make the broader value of the offering visible, relevant and compelling to the target segment — and reduce price as the deciding factor.
OPTIMUS deployed LRV (Leveraging Relevant Value) as part of a strategic competitiveness initiative, bringing Product, Marketing, Sales and customer insight together to make differentiated value relevant, visible and commercially defensible.
Methodology
1. Identify the value elements
Cross-functional workshops mapped the complete offering beyond product features — reliability and consistency, value assurance, knowledge and capability support, global presence, domain expertise and other non-product sources of value — translated into a structured set of Value Elements.
2. Establish customer relevance
Workshops with customers, users and domain experts established which Value Elements genuinely mattered to the target segment, their relative importance, where the offering was truly differentiated, and which elements could elevate the segment’s Minimum Value Offering (MVO).
3. Build the Value Grid
Value Elements were mapped against customer relevance and the company’s relative strength. The resulting Value Grid revealed what to highlight, reinforce, downplay or redefine — becoming the bridge between value assessment and value communication.
4. Shape and influence the MVO
The most relevant, differentiated elements were combined into a focused, segment-specific narrative to shape the Minimum Value Offering — quantifying differentiated value through a tangible Relevant Value / Price ratio that demonstrated which proposition delivered more for the customer’s investment.
Strategic & commercial impact
LRV redefined competitive engagement — from price-led feature comparison to customer-relevant value.
- Shifted the organization from a defensive, feature-and-price narrative to a value-led position
- The Relevant Value / Price ratio gave a tangible basis to justify higher pricing without relying on discounts
- Shaping the MVO changed the competitive rules of engagement in the company’s favour
- Value Grid + managed MVO + RV/Price ratio made differentiation tangible and commercially defensible
- Stronger customer preference, higher price realization and better gross margins
The LRV insight: bridge customer imperatives and product-level value propositions, and you compete on the value that matters to customers — translating into improved ASPs and gross margins.