Sales, Marketing, Value Delivery, Value Creation, Finance. Pick Two.

Any company can only be good at two of these things and should really optimize the efforts on two. As a company can’t do it all and can really only focus its resources on optimizing a few pieces.

Examples:

* Coca Cola. Sales, Marketing. They are selling sugar water no new value is being created or delivered.
* Apple. Marketing and Value Creation. They are heavy on advertising and building new products.
* Microsoft. Sales and Value Creation. They are selling to enterprises and they make most of their money on sales. Their marketing efforts are largely limited to Xbox it seems.
* Starbucks. Marketing and Value Delivery. you can buy coffee anywhere. Why buy it at Starbucks other than the idea of the third place.
* Safeway. Marketing and Value Delivery. They don’t really make their own food per se. they basically act as a distribution.
* Uber. Marketing and Value Delivery. They haven’t created new value they have found a more efficient delivery method for wanting a taxi.
* Amazon. Value Delivery and Value Creation. Amazon creates amazing amount of value and delivers it cheaper allowing them economies of scale.