Summary

Most tech organisations mistake extra features or lower prices for progress. In procurement-led buying, the signal gets buried. Clarity returns when you compete on outcome-based value; it forces a choice. That’s when you regain momentum, align product and sales around measurable results, and protect pricing power.

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Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The Real Risk

Commoditisation rarely arrives because a competitor ships one more feature; it arrives when your definition of value drifts from what buyers are actually paying for. If you anchor the story in functionality, procurement can anchor the conversation in cost. Margins narrow, cycles lengthen, and you’re judged as interchangeable. Investors then read the signal: an execution engine without a strategic narrative.

Zuora notes that 46% of companies have introduced some form of consumption-based pricing in recent years, a sign that buyers now expect spend to track realised value rather than feature breadth.

Redefine Value

The strategic move is to articulate an outcome thesis: the specific business result you enable, for whom, under what conditions, and how it’s evidenced. That thesis becomes the spine of your pricing, packaging and proof. Price then becomes a function of shared outcomes and time-to-impact, not a number fished from a competitor’s website.

Translate this into a CFO-grade value case: baseline the current state, specify the delta you create, and commit to how it’s measured. When your commercial model mirrors the way value shows up in the client’s P&L, the debate shifts from “how much” to “how soon.”

Design For Outcomes

Turning the thesis into operating reality requires a few deliberate design choices:

• Package by outcome scenario, not feature tier; make it easy to buy the result, not the toolkit.
• Use pricing mechanics that align risk and reward, such as a platform fee with a usage corridor tied to verified milestones.
• Instrument value from day one: baseline metrics, leading indicators, and a cadence to review progress with the customer.
• Enable sales to lead with quantified before-and-after narratives and simple, credible proofs.

In our experience with leadership teams at inflection points, this work lands fastest when one team owns the outcome definition and everyone else adopts it as the organising principle.

Leadership Implications

Three practical implications for senior teams:

• Strategy and roadmap: Prioritise capabilities that accelerate time-to-outcome, even if they’re less glamorous than new features.
• Pricing governance: Create a cross-functional panel that tests offers against an outcome scorecard before they reach the field.
• Investor narrative: Recast performance metrics around value realisation (e.g., outcome adoption, verified impact) to signal defensibility.

When this alignment holds, discounting becomes the exception, not the default, because your commercial logic is as clear as your product.

A Different Trajectory

Outcome-led brands compete on relevance and proof, not noise and feature counts. As markets converge, the organisations that tie price, product and evidence to customer outcomes will compound trust, defend pricing power, and earn strategic access while others are negotiated down to parity.

Sources:

• How consumption models contribute to business success — Zuora

Further Resources

1. Brand Values as Operating Principles: A Modern Approach to Tech Talent
2. Why Feature-Driven Messaging Risks Product-Led Growth
3. AI Messaging: Building Credibility Beyond the Hype

Brand clarity often begins with the right questions — we’d be glad to explore them with your team. Start the conversation.

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