In the 1800s, lobster was served in American prisons.
So often that inmates complained.
There were even rules limiting how many times a week they could be made to eat it.
“The cockroach of the sea” was one of the cheapest proteins available at the time.
Today, fresh lobster is among the most exclusive and expensive things we can eat. At home and in restaurants alike.
But nothing changed about the lobster itself.
What changed was the context.
The railroad made it possible to transport lobster live, far from the American coast.
Transportation made it expensive. And as the price rose, people began to perceive the once-despised crustacean differently.
Restaurants added it to their menus. Supply declined. The story changed.
Nobody actually decided that lobster should become a luxury. Luxury emerged as a side effect of logistics, price and perception.
And suddenly, lobster was exclusive.
It’s the same mechanism that drives how value is created in B2B sales.
Value rarely sits in the solution itself. Value emerges in relation to the situation the customer is in.
The same solution can be perceived as irrelevant in one organization and strategically critical in another.
Not because the solution is different. But because the context is.
The best salespeople therefore understand something many miss: Customers rarely buy the objectively best solution.
They buy the solution that feels most relevant to the problem they’re trying to solve right now.
That’s why the strongest salespeople don’t start with product, demo or features. They start by understanding the customer’s situation better than the competition does.
When you understand the context better than others, you don’t always need to change the offering. Often, it’s enough to change how the customer sees it.
The real question isn’t how good your offering is. The question is how well your sales team understands the context in which it needs to create value.
That’s where most deals are won or lost.
That’s why we built a simple diagnostic tool that helps sales organizations understand what position they actually hold with their customers today.
No registration. No data stored. Takes five minutes.
