Two simple questions lie at the heart of every business:

What am I selling?
What are you buying?

Most leaders can answer quickly. A consultancy sells strategy. A SaaS company sells software. A manufacturer sells equipment. On paper, the answers are obvious.

But in practice, they’re incomplete, because it isn’t you who ultimately defines what’s being sold. It’s your customer. And what they believe they’re buying doesn’t always align with what you think you’re selling.

The Concept of Value

Most organizations understand this idea on some level, even if they haven’t named it explicitly. Early in a company’s life, leaders spend significant time clarifying product–market fit. But as success builds, complacency often follows, and it’s easy to assume that what you’re selling and what customers are buying must be the same thing.

Peter Drucker put it plainly in People and Performance: “What customers think they are buying, what they consider value, is decisive—it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper. And what customers buy and consider value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or service does for them. And what is value for customers is…anything but obvious.”

Value, in other words, isn’t the product or service itself—it’s the utility, the benefit, the outcome customers believe they’re receiving. And that definition is inherently subjective.

This recognition explains why forward-thinking organizations invest heavily in research to uncover customer motivations. Behavioral scientists, anthropologists, and UX specialists are hired not to validate what leaders assume, but to uncover what customers actually value.

The role of leadership, then, is to continually assess and reassess that value so the business doesn’t drift into misalignment—selling one thing while customers believe they’re buying another. One customer may be buying on price, another on craftsmanship, another on convenience.

The task is simple to articulate but difficult to execute: align what you sell with what your customers truly buy. That alignment is the foundation of sustainable success.

Emotion and Logic Are the Dynamic Duo

For businesses to thrive over the long term, they have to move past the obvious transaction and uncover the motivations behind a customer’s decision to buy. People buy emotionally and justify intellectually.

Michael LeBoeuf illustrated this clearly in How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life:

• Don’t sell me clothes. Sell me style, confidence, and attractiveness.

• Don’t sell me insurance. Sell me peace of mind and a secure future.

• Don’t sell me a house. Sell me comfort, pride, and a piece of the dream.

• Don’t sell me books. Sell me knowledge and hours of enjoyment.

The point is simple: customers rarely buy the thing itself. They buy the way it makes them feel and the value they believe it delivers. A dress shirt isn’t just fabric—it’s confidence. A machine isn’t just metal—it’s a safer, more efficient workday and the sense that the manufacturer values the operator’s experience.

As Seth Godin puts it: “We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff.”

That’s why it’s worth asking, again and again: What are we really selling? What are our customers truly buying? The answer will always come back to value—and defining it with clarity is where strategy, and growth, begin.