Trim & Stack De-Commoditization
When you need this method
Prospects say, in effect: "You are all the same, so we will take the cheapest." When offers look comparable, price decides. The cause rarely lies in the product core, but in the offer containing the same building blocks as the competitors'.
Approach
- 1Collect every micro-problem along the customer journey. This often surfaces dozens beyond the obvious ones.
- 2Sketch an ideal solution for each problem, independent of today's product shape.
- 3Score each solution on two dimensions: value to the customer × marginal cost to you.
- 4Keep what delivers high value at low marginal cost; cut the rest (trim).
- 5Bundle the remaining components into an offer no competitor carries in this combination (stack).
Typical application
A typical case: a B2B SaaS in the mid-market segment competes with three functionally similar vendors and keeps losing on price. A journey analysis reveals several unsolved side problems, data migration and training new staff, for example. Build-once components such as a migration assistant and a template library cost almost nothing per customer but solve expensive pains. The re-bundled package can no longer be compared one-to-one, and the price discussion shifts to a value discussion.
Limits and counter-indications
The method de-commoditizes the offer, not the market: without proper positioning, even the best bundle gets sorted into the wrong comparison class. Components with high marginal costs must not be stacked out of sales pressure, or margin erodes. In heavily standardized RFPs the mechanism only works to a limited degree.
How to measure impact
Track the share of deals lost on price and the realized margin per closed deal before and after the offer redesign.
Related methods
Sources
- 1.Marketing Success Through Differentiation—of Anything (opens in a new tab) · Harvard Business Review (Theodore Levitt) · 1980 · academic and scholarly literatureTrägt die Grundthese, dass es keine austauschbare Ware gibt und dass Anbieter sich über das unterscheiden, was sie um die eigentliche Leistung herum anbieten, gerade in Industrie- und Dienstleistungsmärkten.
- 2.The Elements of Value (opens in a new tab) · Bain & Company / Harvard Business Review (Eric Almquist, John Senior, Nicolas Bloch) · 2016 · investment, consulting or analyst firmLiefert die geordnete Liste von dreißig Wertbestandteilen, mit der sich die kleinen Probleme eines Kunden systematisch aufnehmen und einzeln bewerten lassen.
Origin: Hormozi · Adapted from: Alex Hormozi ($100M Offers/$100M Leads, YouTube-Langform)
Last reviewed: 2026-07-25 by Dr. Oliver Gausmann