Many years ago, I wanted to sell licenses for our self-developed software for TV stations to a radio station. The boss there said “the software is ready, isn’t it? Then all you have to do is burn it onto a CD and install it here. A CD costs 50 cents – so why do you want €80,000 from me?”.
At that time I started to argue with production costs, effort, number of lines of code, developers’ salaries, etc. and thus justify the price. But I lost from the start with this argument. It’s not about how much you have invested in developing a product or completing a project – it’s about the (added) value the product has for the customer.
If this added value can be demonstrated, then it is a good product and you can achieve a good price for it. Without added value for the customer, it would be more serious not to offer the product at all.
In projects, we often tend to lose sight of the goal – namely precisely this added value. Projects and products are not successful because they cost a lot of money or because a lot of people worked on them – they are successful if they represent added value for users and customers.
We are familiar with the Maslow pyramid of needs from the field of gamification. This can be adapted both for the commitment of employees and for classifying the benefits of projects or products. Only those who are aware of this can achieve sustainable success.
