Companies that sell soap, perfume, candy bars, and other consumer products are expert at "decommoditizing" them: finding and capturing the value of intangible benefits and building strong brand names that can provide a kind of differentiation in the minds of consumers. But companies that sell products such as bulk chemicals, paper, and steel to businesses tend to be unsophisticated in these matters. Burdened by corporate cultures that emphasize operations and sales over marketing, many of these companies constantly strive to churn out more and more product more and more cheaply and then to sell as much of it as possible at the market price. Viewing themselves as commodity producers, they are particularly likely to overlook the nonfunctional features of their products—delivery speeds, after-sales service, and so on.

As a result of this mentality, such companies leave large amounts of money on the table. They would be far better off if they took a page from the playbooks of marketing-oriented businesses and embraced the—to them, unlikely—notion that buyers care not only about the price of a product but also about the way it is sold to them, the services that accompany it, and the nature of their relationship with the...