Bespoke proposals: does the seller's effort create value for the customer?
In high-value selling, a proposal may involve salespeople, engineers and specialists before a customer has even expressed a decision. The managerial question is precise: how can the effort invested in developing it be kept separate from the value the customer actually recognises?
What the literature establishes
Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely (2012, Journal of Consumer Psychology) show, in construction and assembly experiments, that participants can place a higher value on objects they have made themselves. This 'IKEA effect' depends in particular on successful task completion: not every effort automatically increases perceived value. These findings concern the maker's evaluation, not the value recognised by an independent buyer.
A second mechanism: ownership changes valuation
Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch and Richard Thaler (1990, Journal of Political Economy) identify, in experimental markets, a gap between the amounts people demand to give up an object they own and the amounts offered to acquire it. Their research thus distinguishes the owner's position from the buyer's, even when the object remains identical. This mechanism differs from the effort of making something, but both studies caution against treating the seller's valuation as a neutral measure.
The premature conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that a bespoke proposal is necessarily overvalued by its author. These studies do not establish that: specialist engineering can genuinely improve compatibility, compliance or operating conditions. The distinction is between what the work has objectively changed and what the team wants acknowledged because it has invested time. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot establish
The experiments cited do not examine complex proposals negotiated between organisations; applying their findings to a sales team remains a hypothesis to test. Technical validation, collective decision-making and regulatory constraints may modify the mechanisms observed in the laboratory. Nevertheless, an internal review that counts hours invested without examining customer use cannot, on its own, establish a proposal's value.
A practical check in Bâle
Within SHR's 'Vente à forte valeur ajoutée' programme, an exercise applicable in Basel would involve asking a colleague who did not help develop the proposal to review offers for pharma, life sciences, Rhine logistics or international R&D. Before approval, each bespoke element would be linked to a documented customer requirement and an explicit acceptance criterion, whether concerning traceability, logistics continuity or interoperability. The measure would be the proportion of bespoke elements with both supporting records, verifiable in the sales file, rather than the hours spent on the proposal. This indicator would not prove an effect on sales, but would make visible the customisation whose usefulness remains to be established. To go further: explore the High-Value Selling training in Basel in the canton of Basel-Stadt, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: High-Value Selling in Basel
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