# Trim & Stack De-Commoditization

> A method against commoditization: list every micro-problem along the customer journey, score each solution by customer value and your own marginal cost and keep only what delivers high value at low marginal cost. The result is an offer that escapes direct price comparison.

- Canonical URL: https://www.convios.com/en/methods/trim-and-stack
- Language version: https://www.convios.com/de/methodik/trim-stack
- Status: Convios method toolkit
- Method library: https://www.convios.com/en/methods — Markdown: https://www.convios.com/en/methods.md

## Problem

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

1. Collect every micro-problem along the customer journey. This often surfaces dozens beyond the obvious ones.
2. Sketch an ideal solution for each problem, independent of today's product shape.
3. Score each solution on two dimensions: value to the customer × marginal cost to you.
4. Keep what delivers high value at low marginal cost; cut the rest (trim).
5. Bundle the remaining components into an offer no competitor carries in this combination (stack).

## Example

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

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.

## Metric

Track the share of deals lost on price and the realized margin per closed deal before and after the offer redesign.

## Sources

- Marketing Success Through Differentiation—of Anything — Harvard Business Review (Theodore Levitt), 1980 · academic and scholarly literature · supports the underlying mechanism. Carries the basic thesis that there is no such thing as an interchangeable commodity and that vendors differentiate through what they offer around the core deliverable, particularly in industrial and service markets. (https://hbr.org/1980/01/marketing-success-through-differentiation-of-anything)
- The Elements of Value — Bain & Company / Harvard Business Review (Eric Almquist, John Senior, Nicolas Bloch), 2016 · investment, consulting and analyst firms, industry bodies and public agencies · supports the underlying mechanism. Provides an ordered taxonomy of thirty elements of value drawn from a US consumer survey. It shows that customers perceive value in many separate elements and serves as a search grid when collecting micro-problems. It is neither a list of customer problems nor does it contain the method's second assessment axis, one's own marginal cost. (https://www.bain.com/insights/the-elements-of-value-hbr/)
- Primary source: Marketing Success Through Differentiation—of Anything (https://hbr.org/1980/01/marketing-success-through-differentiation-of-anything)
- Adapted from: Alex Hormozi ($100M Offers/$100M Leads, YouTube-Langform)

## Related

- Method: [The Value Equation](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/value-equation)
- Method: [5-Component Positioning](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/5-component-positioning)
- Method: [Good-Better-Best Pricing](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/good-better-best)