Offer Physics
Run Diagnostic

Value Creation

Promise

The outcome the customer expects the offer to produce.

What the offer commits to deliver for the customer. Strength comes from magnitude, speed, completeness, certainty, durability, breadth, convenience and strategic importance, and from which customer the Promise is made to, not from adjectives.

Read the long-form treatment →

Related concepts

  • Credibility

    The degree to which this customer believes the Promise.

  • Toll

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

  • Value

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

  • Offer

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

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.

  • Credibility · discounts · Promise

    The Promise does not enter the decision at face value; Credibility determines how much of it the customer is willing to count.

  • Promise · composed of · Value

    The Promise defines and increases the outcome the customer expects, and is therefore where Value begins.

Where this concept is treated at length

  • What is an Offer?

    An offer is more than a product or price. It is the complete structure of the exchange between a customer and a seller.

  • Why Are Offer Problems So Often Misdiagnosed as Copy Problems?

    Many conversion problems are blamed on copy when the real problem is the structure of the offer itself. Learn how to tell the difference.

  • 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.

  • Outperformance

    Being dramatically better on a dimension the customer already uses to compare options.

  • Reframing

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

  • Bundling

    The arrangement of Value elements into a configuration that makes direct comparison with available alternatives difficult.

  • Exclusivity

    Shutting out the comparison by limiting the availability or practical accessibility of substitutable alternatives.

  • 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.

  • Promise: What the Offer Commits to Deliver

    In Offer Physics, Promise is what the offer commits to deliver for the customer. A canonical treatment of scope, strength, precision, dependencies, promise inflation, the levers that make a Promise more valuable, and the Promise Audit.

  • 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.

  • Value Creation: Why Adding Value Is Not Enough

    Value Creation has two halves: first imagine Value for the customer unconstrained by Cost, then engineer and select against Cost using Value Margin, where the design test is whether a change increases Value by more than it increases Cost.

Where to use this