Need-Fulfillment? Or Need-Creation?

What business are you in? When products are a part of your offerings, there are two ways to go to market. You can source the request from your customer and be in the need-fulfillment business; or you can create solutions, generate ideas, develop visions and plans and create the need.

When you are in the need-fulfillment business, your customer will tell you what they want and when they want it. If you’re lucky, they may also even tell you how much they want to pay for it. They can also do this with three, four, six or 12 of your competitors on the same project. Need-fulfillment is very much a commodity business and when buyers are procuring commodities price is king. Unfortunately, low price is a zero sum game. The race to the bottom is filled with the skeletons of folks who won the job but lost their business.