Jun 25, 2014 | Customers, Leadership, Strategy
courtesy Tom Fishburne. http://tomfishburne.com/2009/04/the-value-proposition.html
Customer Value has almost become a cliché, often trotted out to cover the lack of real marketing insight.
Effective articulation of customer value, and the business model and processes to deliver it remains at the core of those businesses that find success. It is particularly relevant to SME’s as they must ensure their very limited resources are focussed where they can best deliver outcomes, they do not have the benefit of scale to absorb mistakes.
Following is a list of questions frequently asked in strategy sessions that seek to identify, and give form to this most elusive notion of “Value”.
- Why do customers come to us rather than go to the competition?
- What customer needs are currently unmet or under met?
- How have customer needs changed in the last few years?
- If we project forward two years and look back, how have their needs changed now?
- What could our competitors do for our customers that we would like to be able to do?
- Where are new customers coming from, and why?
- Are there new competitors emerging that offer value different to ours?
- To what degree does our concerns for customers welfare really drive our =decision making
- What else could we do for customers?
- What could we do to attract new customers?
Each of these questions can and should generate a great deal of discussion, the quality of that discussion is a measure in itself of how well you understand “Why” you do what you do, rather than just What and How you do it.
The really successful companies do not wait for strategy session, they ask themselves these question every day, and the answers drive how they behave and interact with customers and prospects.
Jun 24, 2014 | Change, Communication, Management, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
I asked that question a week or so ago of a group of SME’s, most of whom did not have any digital presence.
None said their businesses would survive without a phone. Why is it then that they think they can survive without a website and social media presence? These tools are as integral to success as the phone, but like the phone, need to be used well, as they are just a tool.
Last week (July 19, 2014) the ABS released a report “Summary of IT use and innovation in Australian Business”
web presence by size
Web presence by industry
Businesses with 4 or less employees 35% penetration, 19 or less employees, 60% penetration, overall about 50% of enterprises have no web presence.
Lowest web penetration is, obviously in industries with many SME’s, agriculture, transport, and distribution.
It is a report that highlights the paucity of digital capability amongst SME’s, which are the backbone of the Australian economy, and back up previous reports by Sensis and others pointing out the shortfall.
The building of digital capability by SME’s is not just necessary to compete, it is vital for survival.
Social media use
The pattern is repeated in social media, but is more pronounced, most SME’s do not even use the simplest forms to market their business.
I remain “gobbsmacked” that so many still seem not to have got the message,
That is where your customers are!!!
But what opportunities there are for improvement and leverage, it just takes a bit of energy and time.
Jun 23, 2014 | Governance, Leadership, Management
http://tobytripp.github.io/meeting-ticker/
Meetings are supposed to be a place where work gets done, accountabilities exercised options articulated and examined, decisions made, and outcomes reported. However, often they become just a reason to have another meeting.
Whilst the public sector comes in for some pretty harsh criticism, they are not alone.
Last week I found myself in a meeting called by a prospective client so I felt it sensible to attend and contribute.
No agenda, minutes of the previous meeting were supplied as we walked into the room, no definitive objective, just another bloody meeting.
To amuse myself, I tried to calculate the cost of the thing, thousands, and found myself thinking about the waste, and how to fix it, and only came up with the same stuff I have written about before. Serendipitously, later in the day, my inbox “plinked” with a lovely little cartoon from Hugh MacLeod that does his usual great job of nailing the topic with a few words and lines, and links.
The infographic in one link is terrific, and the meeting clock is wonderful, I will use it regularly from here on in when I see wasted resources being directed towards massaging someone’s ego, or “busywork” being done by having another bloody meeting.
Jun 20, 2014 | Communication, Social Media
not an algorithm
There are platforms that will automate social for you, do everything, except the one thing that really counts, make a person to person connection.
“Social Media” badly used is a terrible misnomer, it is often anti-social media, an effort to remove people from the process.
Maybe we will develop an app to do that, but I suspect not, we are social animals, it is in our DNA, and you cannot substitute that for some digital metaphor.
Our bullshit detectors are enormously sensitive.
Last week, I got another email, personally addressed , so it passed the first test, but the font of my name was slightly different, Boom! Bullshit detector cuts in.
I guess it was better than the Dear Mr. Allen Roberts, or even Dear Mr Roberts Allen, but really it was only just more obviously a machine that had been poorly set up, a SPAM, or the result of my email address being scraped from somewhere I would rather have had it remain private.
Authenticity matters, and it is hard to scale. The tools will get us part of the way, like all tools, but it is how we use them that really counts. Using tools to get you to the point of eyeballing is sensible, a logical leveraging of technology, but few people are happy to eyeball a device and call it “Sally”, and really mean it.
Technology can get you so far, but usually is still requires people to close the social loop
Jun 18, 2014 | Collaboration, Customers, retail, Small business
Strategyaudit.com.au
Chain stores dominate our grocery shopping environment, they have developed all the advantages of scale, and use them to the advantage of their shareholders, by delivering returns, and to customers by delivering low prices.
The model works, in Australia 75% of the grocery shopping dollar goes to one of two retailers, and small retailers have been decimated.
However, small retailers are making a comeback, the ones left are good, good enough to deliver value to their customers in different ways to the chains, and they are making a good bob.
They compete with a variety of strategies, all of which have elements of the following 10 rules.
- Make the store look warm, friendly, inviting, and, importantly, current. The last Valentines day, a client put in huge volumes of roses on which he put some very cheap prices compared to the highway robbery employed elsewhere, but he also had a promotion of Chocolates and a voucher for collaborative promotion with the grog shop two doors down, on sale. He did sell a lot of roses, a pile of chocolate, and got a slice from the bubbles the grog shop sold.
- Collaborative retailing is a really effective way of building sales and relationship s with customers. The example above worked really well, as have others that group retailers of differing women’s apparel, dresses, shoes, hairdressing services, et al together.
- Experiment, with everything under your control. Store layout, range, price, stock weight and position, proximity of complementary products, promotional activity, it is a long list limited only by imagination and energy. However, experimenting is not the only game, you need to track results, now easy via the electronic tills, and if nothing else, Excel pivot tables. Understand what works, and improve it for next time, eliminating the things that prove not to work. It is a simple formula, challenging to implement consistently, but in principal, simple. Learn as you go, and as the you experiment more, you will also find your depth of tacit knowledge also increases. A small business can put in place an experiment, have the outcomes and a resulting tactical outlook while their bigger competitors are still trying to get a meeting together to decide if it may be a good idea.
- Use technology widely, not just in the tracking of sales, but in the management of your operations, and most importantly, the engagement of your consumers. Make your website the co-ordination centre of your marketing efforts. Mobile, email, social media platforms, blog posts, all potentially have a place, but mostly you cannot do them all, so make informed choices. However, you need to recognise that digital is not free, there are both operating and opportunity costs attached, and for most SME’s, a capability gap. Outsource all you can, which is getting easier by the day, and importantly, track the results of everything you are doing on line
- Make sure you have a website that does you justice. A mate sent this to me this link to Victor Churchill, a butcher in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and now I just want to go there.
- Personalise, personalise, personalise. The chain retailers have “mass market” business model, they cannot easily personalise their offer to the customer base. They may have a technology edge because they have the resources, but how often does the casual filling the shelves greet a customer by name? Enquire after their kids, and ask how the fruit basket you supplied last week for the centre-piece of your dinner party work out?.
- Specialise in what you do best, deliver “depth” to consumers where the mass retailers can only deliver “breadth” to a mass market.
- Be the expert in your category. If you are a produce retailer, know where the best strawberries come from, and when they will be available , similarly, a fashion retailer needs to be current with the trendsetters, to know what is coming, what will accessorise easily, and how the fashion can be tailored to the market they are serving. Most people want to deal with, and seek the affirmation of experts, be the expert, and they will keep on coming back.
- Apply the disciplines of Category Management to your inventory and space management. In its simplest form, Category Management is a mindset that seeks to allocate finite and valuable shelf space on the basis of maximising the customer experience, while delivering optimised profitability and long term commercial sustainability. This can get as complicated as you like, but for an SME, building an excel database leveraging the capability of pivot tables, tools virtually every business has sitting on their PC already, is sufficient to get started.
- Watch the cash. This one always gets a run. Retailers greatest cost, and biggest risk is usually inventory, and inventory is a raging consumer of cash. On the other hand, the oldest adage in retailing is “stock sells stock”, so there is a tightrope to be walked. Perhaps the most valuable, and in SME’s underused, performance measure in retailing is stock turn. Use it aggressively to fine tune your range, and inventory.
None of these “rules” are of great value separately, but together, they offer a potent competitive tool set for small retailers.
