Offer Physics
Apply to the Founding Cohort

Foundations

Decision Context

The conditions that determine whether a customer who judges the offer favorably can actually proceed.

Budget availability, purchasing authority, implementation capacity, procurement, internal politics, competing priorities and timing. A valuable offer is not automatically an actionable one.

Read the long-form treatment →

Related concepts

  • Offer

    The complete set of terms under which a customer is asked to exchange something of value for a promised outcome.

  • Value

    The value created and realized for this customer by the offer: the Promise discounted by Credibility and diminished by Toll.

  • Toll

    Toll is everything other than Price the customer must bear to obtain and realize the Promise.

  • Price

    The monetary consideration the customer is asked to pay, and the terms on which they pay it.

How this concept behaves

Qualitative relationships from the framework registry. None of these are formulas.

  • Offer · evaluated through · Promise, Credibility, Toll, Price, Market Alternatives, Decision Context

    An offer is evaluated through Promise, Credibility, Toll, Price, comparison with market alternatives, and Decision Context.

Where this concept is treated at length

  • Market of One: The Gate to Value-Based Pricing

    A Market of One exists when no readily substitutable alternative provides the same relevant configuration of Value. How reducing substitutability lets Value, rather than category Price, become the basis of the customer's choice and of pricing.

  • Reframing

    Changing which comparison applies: the category, the success metric, or the problem the purchase is framed around.

  • What Makes an Offer Valuable?

    Value is customer-side: a Promise, discounted by Credibility and diminished by Toll, including why choosing which customer receives the Promise is itself a way to increase its value.

  • Credibility: What This Customer Must Believe

    In Offer Physics, Credibility is the degree to which this customer believes this Promise will actually hold. A canonical treatment of required beliefs, sources of doubt, credibility mechanisms, and the Credibility Audit.

  • Toll: Everything the Customer Must Bear Beyond Price

    In Offer Physics, Toll is everything other than Price the customer must bear to obtain and realize the Promise: time, effort, learning, setup, coordination, attention, switching, lock-in, maintenance, opportunity cost and risk.

  • Decision Context

    Decision Context is the set of conditions determining whether a customer who judges an offer favorably can actually buy it. A canonical Offer Physics treatment of budget, authority, capacity, procurement, politics, priorities and timing, and how to avoid misdiagnosing them as offer problems.

Where to use this