For as good as it is to have a CPO, is it enough? Thinking back to Peter
Drucker’s marketing concept, the wealth a company creates for its customers
exists outside of its four walls. Professional pricers may suffer some of the
same fate as cost accountants—becoming too inward focused on efforts and
activities, not results and wealth creation.
But who is in charge of value? Who in the company is keeping their focus
on the outside in an attempt to understand and continuously enhance value
for customers? Perhaps it is time to create a chief value officer, a role to be
discussed in Chapter 21. Until then, since it has already been explained how
value—not cost—is the ultimate arbiter of price, it is worth exploring how
customers determine value, the subject we turn to next, as we explore what
and how people really buy