Mar 23, 2015 | Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Management, Strategy
Plan backwards
All sorts of planning activity is aimed at defining the point where we want to be, then assembling the resources and capabilities to get there.
That is how planning is done, almost always, because by and large, it seems to work, and it keeps the spectator crowd happy.
Libraries have been written that describe all sorts of methods and models that can be used. They can be very useful and thought provoking, providing a framework to help articulate the factors that will impact the business, and the options you have in responding, but they rarely offer an antidote to the malaise affecting the development of really distinctive capabilities, genuinely new products, processes and business models.
The real innovations, the things that change everything seem to come from a different place, “left field” being the most common description.
Most planning ends up being just an extrapolation of the past, despite the well meaning and significant effort to make it something else.
Perhaps a better way is to put yourself in the future place, then work backwards, identifying the steps that need to have been taken to reach the point where in your mind, you are now.
Be specific about the end, articulate it clearly, and then “Plan Backwards” by considering the factors that delivered value for you. I generally call this process ‘Hindsight Planning’.
- What did you do that worked, and conversely, what might you have done that did not work?
- What capabilities did you need to develop?
- What trends drove changes to the industry you were able to leverage?
- Where did the technical innovations you leveraged come from?
- Which markets and customers were successfully addressed?
- What big customer issues were addressed?
- What did the business model(s) you used look like?
- And finally, How were you able to extract value for all these things?
This sort of analysis, if it is to lead to a positive outcome, requires that you recognise and deal with two types of barriers:
Management barriers.
People like consistency and predictability, so when the forecast future looks very like the past, just a bit blurry, they are happy with it, endorse it, and resource it. By contrast, being the harbinger of change that will affect the status quo is no way to get ahead in most organisations. However, it remains a truth that the future never looks the same as the past, no matter how much we would like it to be so.
- Idea averaging. Management absorbs and usually just “averages” or applies committee thinking to a good idea, but at worst, just rejects them for a range of reasons that sound absurd and utterly naive with the benefit of hindsight. Existing businesses are rooted in the networks and frameworks required to make them successful today, and are usually intolerant of new things that involve risk. Usually successful incumbents are well evolved, so are resistant to change, their current way has enabled the current business to be successful, why change? There are many examples of this phenomena, Kodak being a standout, Polaroid another, Cobb & Co another. The current attempts by the taxi industry to resist the encroachment of Uber in my hometown, Sydney, is an example unfolding, and the music industry prosecuting their customers for using their products is an example of one that is just about folded.
- New business models. The successful commercial execution of a real innovation generally requires some new way of delivering the value to customers and extracting value for the suppliers. In short, a new business model. Industry incumbents rarely completely disrupt themselves, by definition, they have too much to lose. Therefore, there needs to be new strategies and supporting business models developed by those outside or on the fringes in some way of an industry. Uber and Apple came from way outside the industries they disrupted, and can you imagine Hilton, or Accor funding that mad idea AirBnB that was gong to crucify their budget tourist dollars?
- The Profit paradox. Profit is counted by looking backwards rather than forward, rewards came after the fact. Forecasting profit, or “fortune telling” is inherently risky, as the only think you know for sure is that you will be wrong, the real question is by how much, but the consequences of getting this brand of fortune telling wrong are significant. However, in the long term, you are only truly profitable if your returns are greater than the cost of capital. If they are equal, you may as well put your money in the bank, because it is safe, less than that and you are long term destroying capital. This simple fact is ignored in almost every profit forecast, statement or review I have ever seen. The conundrum is that to generate a return greater than the cost of capital you must take risks and do stuff differently, some of which will not work out, or only work out in the long term, therefore risking the current profit. It is pretty easy to ramp up the profit made today at the expense of tomorrow, but in this case, tomorrow does actually come.
Creative barriers.
Creative barriers evolve around points of the assembly of ideas, where information, insight, experience, are mixed up to create the otherwise unlikely connections that are the foundation of a creative solution to a problem, situation, or challenge. These are the barriers that most businesses try and get around by the off site strategic planning sessions that rarely seem to be able to deliver the promise of the day. The energy and drive in the workshop room gets absorbed by the day to day of being back in the business. Removal of the barriers is a high priority challenge for management.
The barriers to creativity are many and varied, often overlapping in many places. Following is a ‘brain-dump’ list of the ones I consistently find.
- No commitment from the ‘top’
- It is not OK to be wrong.
- Give up too easily. Edison’s famous quote “Now I know 999 ways that do not work” whilst experimenting to develop the lightbulb resonates still.
- Creativity is hard to quantify, and is therefore often not measured. The old adage what gets measured gets done is right, so creativity is extinguished.
- Lack of resources, time, equipment, money, are all used as excuses for being too willing just to accept the status quo.
- Enterprise culture eliminates risk as far as possible, and creativity is inherently risky and “out there”.
- Rules rule. Particularly in public enterprises, and creativity is not in the rules.
- Challenging orthodoxies, assumptions and the status quo is frowned upon.
- Lack of what I call ‘environmental intelligence’ or an understanding of the macro trends and individual movements in the commercial and strategic environment in which you compete. Seeing trends that impact an enterprise, and their intersections is a rich source of creativity.
- Lack of discipline. Perhaps counter intuitively, creativity includes a range of activities that if subject to some disciplined and focused thinking can deliver great results.
- Not having the right people. Creativity is perhaps the most collaborative of human activities, well, almost. Not having the right people is a commonly owned albatross.
- Everyone can say “no”. Formal layers of approval for ideas act on creativity like a wet blanket on a campfire.
- Creativity is not a required contribution from everyone, it is assumed to be the product only of the young, or the marketing department, of the boss’s wife. Creativity should be everyone’s job!
I could go on, the list is huge, it is a wonder that creativity survives at all given the barriers.
An idea is the outcome of all that has gone before, and the triggers around at any given time, rarely is it the ‘Eureka’ moment. Ray Kurzweil who has a stellar track record in seeing the future in technology believes we need to become comfortable with what he calls “Hybrid thinking” and I can only agree but see that the ideas he articulates have a far greater range than just creativity and innovation in technology.
Mar 19, 2015 | Customers, Governance, Lean, Management, Small business
Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Remove transaction costs. Easy to say, hard to do.
The concept of transactions costs is generally attributed to British Nobel prize winning economist Ronald Coase, and the publication of his 1937 paper “The nature of the firm”
Transaction costs will always be present, they are the enablers of an organisation. The challenge is squeezing the maximum productivity out of the transaction costs you will inevitably incur.
Like all costs, transaction costs fall into three categories:
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- Those that are necessary for the sale, and that add value to the customer, so they would be willing, if you asked them (and this is the big test) to pay for it. Things like delivery of physical products fall here, and we all know there is no such thing as “cost free delivery”. ,
- Those that are necessary, but do not add value to the customer. Costs associated with compliance, your training and innovation programs, taxes and charges all fall here .
- Those costs incurred that do not add value in any way, just consume time and money, such as rework, picking up wrong deliveries, or correcting wrong invoices. You generally do not need an activity costing initiative to know that this third category is usually uncomfortably large, and should be eliminated.
The bloating of transaction costs has three basic causes:
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- Not getting “it right first time” requiring rework to correct the mistake. For small businesses, the costs of mistakes are relatively much harder to absorb than they are for a large enterprise.
- The penalty of small scale, expressed in the variable operational costs incurred, and the productivity per dollar of overhead spent. The flip side is that small operations can be far more agile than large ones, as the distance between a decision being made and actually getting something done, is much shorter.
- Less than optimum processes, or the ways that businesses manage the things that need to be done to support and document a transaction.
If you chose to take a deeper look at these three causes, they are all rooted in the way people go about doing their jobs on a daily basis, and for small businesses, with less people, and far easier personal communication, this is where the leverage can be applied by continuous improvement.
It costs the same to raise and process an invoice of $1,000 as it does for an invoice of $100,000. Therefore the transaction cost % of the invoice value is far greater for the smaller invoice. This relationship is reflected throughout the supply and distribution chain, and even minor improvements can deliver substantial savings. Technology offers the opportunity to reduce the absolute cost of processing to almost nothing, making the transaction cost irrelevant either way, but once people are added to manage the exceptions that cannot be handled automatically, the costs soar.
The source of Woolworths superior performance over the last decade compared to Coles has been the impact of their reductions in transaction costs that have dropped straight to the profit line. Wal-Mart became the biggest retailer in the world by focusing on the reduction of transaction costs of all types, and passing the savings on to consumers as lower prices to attract the volume creating a virtuous circle. Less obviously, they passed many costs back to suppliers, then continued to insist on and successfully extract cost reductions from those same suppliers in spite of increasing their costs, simply because of the scale of their sales potential for suppliers.
It seems to me there are two parameters to transaction costs:
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- The absolute amount of the costs in a whole process
- The productivity of the costs in the process.
Most systems just look at the quantum, and set out to cut corners, work the current system harder, but by looking at the detail of the things that generate the costs, you can eliminate those that do not add value. However, moving a transaction cost on to another link in the supply chain does little to eliminate the cost, it just moves it. Retailers generally have been expert at this moving of transaction costs, while often creating them as a source of revenue. Practices such as making minor claims on a supplier, and holding up payment of a complete invoice until the claim is dealt with, then making the dealing with the claim a minefield for small suppliers abound. A source of the success of Aldi in Australia has been their focus on the reduction of transaction costs, but in return they get their “pounds worth” at the invoiced price point.
In dealing with supermarket retailers over many years, a number of transaction cost types have become evident:
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- Cost of searching, storing, processing & managing information. Category management is a prime suspect here. Suppliers engage in a costly, data intensive exercise in the expectation (hope in most cases) that there will be returns from the collaboration that is hoped to occur, and from the opportunities good category management can unearth. While the costs of the data transactions themselves may have dropped precipitously over the last 20 years, the costs of the overheads to manage them have not.
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- Cost of negotiation. In almost any negotiation where one party has the power, and is happy to use it, the outcome is virtually pre-ordained, it is just the quantum of the cost that is in question. Knowing, and sticking to your “Walk away” point is an absolute must.
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- Cost of time. A vastly under measured cost in most businesses. We tend to have people on staff because there is a job to be done, and we pay them competitive rates to ensure we get the best people we can for the job, but we tend not to measure the value delivered by the doing of the job, its cost is just a part of the fixed overhead. Every minute spent costs a business, but apart from VC operators who use “burn rate” as a key measure, we tend to ignore it.
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- Cost of certification. The range of certifications that are supposedly “needed” from HACCP to OH&S, to quality verification of components in a product to various religious and quality standards are legion. Each costs time, money, effort, and carry heavy opportunity costs. A bit of effort to isolate those that are really needed, and to manage those that are with automated or at least consistent processes can save a significant amount of time and money
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- Cost of influence. People deal with people, not corporations, no matter how automated and impersonal our communications systems become. Getting to know people , building relationships and trust takes time and effort. It is time and effort well spent, to a point, and finding the point at which the costs outweigh the benefits is a management challenge most fail.
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- Costs of cock-ups and rework. This is probably the biggest, most pervasive source of transaction costs. From the wrong invoice to a truckload pf product turning up to be rejected, and turned around dumped or put into rework. It is not just the cost of the product, but the added time, lost sales, loss of reputation, and needless consumption of capacity that really hurts. “Lean” processes target waste, and this one is the biggest waste that occurs, and is often made up of a lot of low hanging fruit if you go looking for it, and know where and how to look.
Small businesses are in a great position to reduce their transaction costs, simply by being good at everything they do, and being “close to the action” can make the wrinkles that can be ironed out that more obvious.
The original post that started the series is here, followed by the more detailed posts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Mar 17, 2015 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
marketing funnel
Creating a marketing funnel is the basis of all digital marketing initiatives. If you put the term into google, you get back 3 million plus responses, many of them having nice illustrations attached that in one way or another, look like a funnel, with stages and various names attached.
However, there are very few places with useful advice on how you create and manage a funnel, perhaps it is easier than I have found it.
Every situation is different, and every prospect needs to be addressed personally in some way, nevertheless, there are a number of generalised stages I have seen, which drive the manner in which you deploy the digital tools.
Step 1. Create a “Hook”. A “Hook” is something that arrests the attention of someone in the target market. This implies, accurately, that you have defined your target market in considerable detail. I am working with someone who is an expert at setting up self managed superannuation funds. His target market is the owners of small businesses that rely on the owners presence, often they are tradesmen, who are over 55, and have not put enough money away enough for retirement. The “Hook” we have evolved is “If you are over 55, and behind in savings for your retirement, you have the opportunity to use a tax effective self managed super fund which delivers a doubling of your net worth in 7 years”.
This statement is in 4 parts:
It identifies the prospect very clearly,
It is very specific about the situation the prospect finds themselves in
It tells them of a solution to the situation
It makes a big promise.
Without the very specific definition of a target market, the Hook is less effective, as it does not speak to anything specific to which a reader will relate, it becomes too general.
Step 2. Generate traffic. This can be done by a variety of means, using both paid and organic means. Organic is slower, and is centred around personal networking, blog posts, articles, and other content that gets shared on social platforms. It is a passive approach. By contrast, paid traffic generation can be very effective with the great degree of target definition that can now be generated by all the social platforms. For my self managed superannuation (SMSF) client, we are targeting the small business owners with a very specific and targeted Google Adwords campaign, coupled with an extensive organic program.
Step 3. Customer capture. Having driven traffic to a website, you need to do something with them to progress them through the steps towards a transaction. Usually this involves the download of something of value for free in exchange for a name and email address. The lead is then followed up with a staged set of automated emails that are responsive to the actions of the potential customer, often offering further “freebies”. This tactic is now so widely used that it is losing its effect, so increasingly it is being supplemented with the further offer of something of greater value still for a minimal amount, $3-7. This does two things:
It qualifies the lead as a real lead, not just a freebie follower,
It gets leads used to using their cards to purchase from you.
Step 4. Transaction development. This process can take many forms, from the gentle prompting towards a transaction that can be a highly iterative and lengthy process, to the maximisation of a sale by adding value to the original offer. By way of example, it takes me ages to come to the conclusion that I need to buy a new suit, it is a substantial cost, and occasional purchase. However, once in a shop, the opportunity to also sell me a tie, belt, shirts, and perhaps another pair of shoes is real. The upsell stage, or as McDonalds have perfected, “would you like fries with that?”
Step 5. Remarketing. Once you have a customer who has bought and hopefully had a good experience, it is easier to sell them again, and again, and over time you can build a very good picture of what they like and what they do not by their interactions with your database. Again, by way of example, I still buy a lot of books, real books from one of the few remaining bookshop chains. I have a card that gives me a discount based on purchases, yet they insist on sending me emails with offers that bear no resemblance to the purchase habits exhibited on their database via the card. Utterly stupid, and exactly the reason they will go out of business eventually. Amazon will never make that mistake, their offers are very specific and targeted to behaviour, not just of the individual, but of the cohort of individuals with similar behaviours that can be ascribed to the individual. In addition, once someone subscribes to your database, you have their permission to market to them, so irrespective of where they may be in the funnel, there should be processes in place to periodically “re-tweak” their interest.
Funnel management Toolbox. There are a range of tools, digital and otherwise, for each step in the sequence, and their relative performance is the subject of much very effective review, so I will not repeat it. Suffice to say several specific tools are necessary for any effective automation.
- Registration page . To attract the registration and manage the delivery of the “freebie” and of the leads details to the auto responder software. There are many around, but Leadpages seems to have the game pretty well sewn up. Recently both Facebook and Twitter have added “one click opt-in” capabilities to their sites that leads people directly to your autoresponder.
- Autoresponder software. Absolutely necessary, and there are a host of suppliers, from those with simple tools to those fully integrated with CRM systems with more bells and whistles than even the most sophisticated and technically savvy medium sized business will struggle with, so my advice for the small businesses where I operate, is to keep it simple. Mailchimp and Aweber are the most popular around my patch, and both work well.
- Creativity and originality. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for some of us this does not yet come in a box, or made available for download, it resides between the ears of real people.
- Customer centric copywriting skills. As with the above, not available via download. It is one thing to get all the digital tools right, but someone still has to be able to make them work to optimum levels, and the copy writing skills and experience needed are significant.
- Technology implementation . Again, somebody who knows what they are doing with this technology. It is one thing to know how it works, it is another entirely to actually make it work. Implementation simply is not as simple as all the vendors would have you believe, for most small businesses, implementation sucks.
PS. The illustration at the top of the post is confusing, hard to understand, and not at all like the last one you saw. Just like in life!!
Mar 16, 2015 | Branding, Customers, Innovation, Marketing, retail, Sales
Words spoken cannot be taken back
Gaining distribution in supermarkets is really hard, and more to the point, expensive.
Supermarkets control the key “choke point” between you as a supplier, and consumers. On occasions when you are pitching a “me too” product, a decision just comes down to the retailer margin and the amount of promotional and advertising dollars that are being thrown at the launch, which both reassures the buyer that you are committed, and offers some confidence that consumers may be receptive. Generally with a “me too” product, you need to be prepared to take something out of your own range to make space, or be able to pinpoint with data an under-performing competitors product that can be deleted.
New products are usually a bit more complicated. For a retailer to put a new product on shelf, in addition to their existing ranges, it is often more than just a simple one in one out decision, particularly if the new product claims to be opening up a new category or subcategory.
In either case, the simple fact is that retailer stores do not have elastic walls, and space needs to be made somehow.
Over the years, I have launched many new products, some category creating products that have been a huge success, and some not so much, and many line extensions of various kinds. However, in the launching of them, I have done hundreds, if not thousands of presentations to supermarket buyers, and found a number of things that should not be said of you are to be successful.
It really is important to recognise that even though you may think your new product is the best thing since sliced bread, supermarket buyers see hundreds a year, and have heard it all before, so your presentation must be sympathetic to that simple fact.
Some of the wrong things to say which have come out of long experience are:
- “Our research says that this product will increase the total size of the mart by $50 million in three years”. You both know that research is usually rubbish, and that everyone lies to supermarket buyers about theirs. If you cannot support the research claims with very solid data, just be honest about it, recognising that even supermarkets buyers cannot tell the future, and be realistic.
- “Our sales forecasts are conservative” See above, and the truth is that the forecasts are usually these days just spreadsheets with autofill, and are really meaningless. Speak more about the assumptions that are the foundation of the numbers rather than the numbers themselves.
- “You are the only chain that has yet to confirm their acceptance and promotional program for this product“. Nonsense. While someone is always last, it will not usually be one of the big retailers. They know you need them more than they need you, so better to honest, although being desperate is also the wrong tactic.
- “XY company, the current category leader is too slow and locked into their ways to react quickly, so we will have this new segment to ourselves for a long period”. Big companies do not usually get big by being stupid, they may be a bit slower than the small guys, but they do know their stuff, and can move quickly when necessary. A buyer will see your confidence as misplaced, and react accordingly.
- “ABC Co do not have the will to risk their cosy positon by innovating” or some similar comment. Denigrating a competitor is a common fault, and should never be done, you just might be denigrating the people who give the buyer his most profitable products, and he will not take kindly to having his stocking decisions being questioned.
- “This product has been protected by patent” More rubbish. Only very few companies have the resources to develop something genuinely new, patent it, then be prepared to spend the megabucks to protect the patent. The last one I can remember is the Nestles cappuccino product in a pouch, a genuine innovation that gave them just a small amount of time before the copy cats arrived. If Nestles cannot so it, you almost certainly cannot, and the buyer knows it, so do not kid yourself.
- “We have first mover advantage“. This is sometimes true, but is may not worth all that much unless there are long lead times involved in equipment. When a new product can be made on existing plant, you cannot usually count on more than about 12 weeks start, after which the copy cats can arrive, correct any mistakes you have made, and capitalise on your investment with consumers to open up the new category. Sometimes it is better to be second mover, and step over the carcass of the pioneer, who gets the arrows in his back. Having said all that, First mover in a genuine innovation does give you a good chance at distribution.
- “Our plant is state of the art“. Retailers do not care much about your plant, so long as their orders are filled, the product is safe for consumers, and moves quickly off their shelves.
There are 40 years experience in these points, some of it painful, but there is no greater (commercial) feeling than seeing a product you have conceived, developed and successfully launched still on the shelves 20 years later, still meeting consumers needs and delivering profits to all concerned.
Mar 11, 2015 | Change, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Designing websites requires the skill of a master juggler
Often I find myself working with a small business to specify a website and digital strategy, and sometimes I am actually taking a brief for a website design. Either way, the same questions keep popping up, so I thought it sensible to list them down.
For some unknown reason, I stopped at 69, although I am sure you can add a number more that have been missed.
Background information.
- What is the purpose of the site?
- What is it about your current digital marketing that needs to be changed, and why?
- Who are your most aggressive competitors?
- Where are the new competitors going to come from?
- If you were to start in business again today, what would you do differently to what you are doing currently?
- How has digital technology changed your competitive environment, and what impact do you think it will have in the next few years?
Your strategy
- What are your corporate values, mission, purpose, however you choose to articulate the reasons you are in business?
- What problems do you solve for your customers?
- What makes you different to your competitors?
- What do you do better that your competitors?
- Why should people do business with you rather than others?
- What are the things you will not do to attract or keep a customer?
Customers
- Describe your most valuable customer.
- Describe the customer journey, how do they typically end up with you?
- What are your levels of customer churn and retention?
- From initial contact, what are your conversion rates?
- What is your conversion cost?
- How do customers find you initially?
- How much is a good customer worth to you over a period of time?
- How long is the sales cycle?
- Do you have a good database of current, past and potential customers, and how is it managed and refreshed?
- Do you know why former customers stopped buying from you?
- Do you have a referral system that captures benefits for the referrer?
Competitors
- What elements of your competitors sites do you like/want?
- What elements of competitors sites do you want to avoid?
- What are your competitors doing to attract your customers and potential customers?
Technical considerations
- Do you have a site architecture or is it part of the design exercise?
- Do you have hosting, domain, email management services to be continued?
- Are the current arrangements if any, compatible with the needs of the new site?
- Are there any specific mobile requirements needed? It is assumed that “mobile friendly” rather than just “mobile compatible” is required.
- What analytics do you want?
- Do you have preferences about the CMS system used?
- How will the content management/ approval system work?
- Do you require log in and chat features, and will they be password protected?
- How will user names and access to the site CMS be managed?
- Are there content on demand requirements, i.e. hidden content becomes visible after a series of actions.
- Are there digital commerce and shopping carts to be managed?
- How will inventory and fulfillment be managed?
- Are there any general functionality requirements you need, such as data bases, and data base interrogation processes, site search facilities, calendars, maps, et al?
- What other digital systems are needed to be integrated, CRM, MRP, order/invoice?
- How will you manage SEO?
- What sort of content download requirements are there?
- What levels of skill are there in the business to apply to the site maintenance?
- Are these compatible with the requirements of the site or is training and outsourcing required?
Design elements.
- What are the most important three things in the design?
- What content and design elements of a current site are required to be carried over?
- What information will go where?
- What corporate logos, colours, designs and style elements must be present?
- How do you want the inclusions that are required, such as calendars & maps to work?
- Will different parts of the site have a different look and feel?
- Are there taglines, market positioning statements or other such marketing elements that need to be incorporated?
- Do you have the original artwork files of elements you want incorporated?
- Do you have photos, video, or other material you want incorporated, and if “yes” do you hold or have paid for the copyright use of them?
- What font sizes and styles are preferred?
- What contact information and automated functions do you want, and where do you want it?
Marketing strategies.
- How are you going to create the content for the site initially, and on an ongoing basis?
- Who is going to maintain the site?
- How does the site integrate into other marketing activities?
- When someone is on the site, what do you want them to do?
- What sites of any type do you like, and why?
- What are the pages you require?
- What social platforms do you want connected, how prominent should the connections be, and which pages do you want them on?
- How are visitors to the site going to be converted?
Project management considerations
- When do you want it? (oh crap)
- Who in your organisation is going to provide the content agreed?
- What content will the contractor provide, and at what cost?
- How will the approval process work as the project progresses?
- How much do you expect all this to cost?
- What are you now prepared to do without?
When you need someone who has successfully juggled in the three ring circus, and knows how to deliver you a great performance without stealing your shirt, give me a call.
