In 2007 Sonos, a manufacturer of luxury wireless-audio systems, struck a deal with Best Buy to sell its products at more than 600 retail locations across the United States. Sonos would be spotlighted in Best Buy stores with live, interactive, multizone demonstrations. In return Best Buy would gain access to the best-reviewed new audio systems in the world. The agreement was a victory for both companies. But 10 years later profit margins were eroding; tension had developed around Sonos’s last-minute promotion changes, pricing issues, and what Best Buy perceived to be a lack of strategic alignment; and Sonos was worried about the departures of key Best Buy personnel and how they would affect the partnership. In 2018, in a cramped, windowless room in Minneapolis, a Best Buy executive gave the Sonos team a de facto ultimatum: Come up with better terms for the partnership, or there was no good reason to continue the meeting.
Stop Selling. Start Collaborating.
The secret to fostering lasting client relationships
From the Magazine (May–June 2022)
· Long read
Ryan Garcia
Summary.
The triple fit canvas is a sales framework designed to facilitate collaborative value creation between sellers and buyers. Inspired by the blue ocean strategy canvas developed by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne and the business model canvas developed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the triple fit canvas is both a diagnostic and an action framework. It extends a limited, product-centric view to a broader, customer-centric perspective. It shifts the focus from selling existing products and services to helping create new ones. In this article the author details the key components of the triple fit canvas and describes how companies such as BMW, Konica Minolta, and GAP have benefited from it.
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review.