Nov 21, 2010 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
As the marginal cost of transactions on the web approaches zero, more and more stuff is “free” . When something is given, the act of giving usually sets up a dynamic of “obligation” on the part of the receiver.
This blog is published on WordPress, for free, the cost to WordPress of hosting my blog, and supplying me with the software is approaching zero.
At some point, I will probably want some features not offered for free. At that time, it is highly unlikely I will go anywhere but the upgrade button on the Blog dashboard, and then Wordpress will generate some revenue, and I will feel I have offered some return for the free use of the software and hosting to this point, as well as not having to climb the barriers to exit.
This dynamic is being repeated everywhere on the web, almost to the point of “free” being the generic price of many services, Wikipedia being the classic.
For marketers, the question is “what is better than free?”, how can we attract customers when free is no longer sufficiently distinctive to be attractive? This goes to the heart of how publishers, of all types, reconstruct their business model to extract a living as their consumer base gets increasingly used to getting their “product” for free.
Nov 15, 2010 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
I am a member of three frequent flier programs, Qantas, Virgin and Singapore, and get frequent updates, offers, and spam from all three, all ignored.
I know where and why my business is split, but they do not, and none have ever asked me the question, although it would be very valuable information to have, not just for me, as my expenditure would hardly rate as significant, but at a macro level. If they had the information, and could mine it, and develop programs that may make them more relevant to me, and presumably many other consumers.
Well, that is coming.
The emerging location tools of the mobile world are going to offer the possibility that Qantas will be able to track my presence in an airport and know when I am not booked to travel with them.
Intrusive perhaps, but valuable consumer share of wallet information if they cared to ask why I travelled with one and not another in any given circumstance.
Nov 2, 2010 | Customers, Sales
A frustrating “customer service” experience recently reminded me of this lovely parody of customer service meets lean principals. If it wasn’t so true, it would be funny.
Getting customers is hard, and getting harder, so when one comes to your door it is for a reason, and the last thing you should be doing is making it hard to open.
Oct 31, 2010 | Customers, Sales
Sales is something we all do, all the time, professionally as well as in our private lives. We may not always be selling a product for an employer, but we will be selling our ideas, priorities, time, and experience, in some way. Here are some simple rules:
- Talk as little as possible, and listen as much as possible
- Recognise early, preferably before anyone else, when the horse is dead and get off
- Act short term to make the sale, but never at the expense of the medium and long term, as any individual sale is rarely the end of the relationship, unless you choose it to be.
- Lack of real understanding of the problems faced by customers, their external competitive and profitability challenges, and the internal organisational and operational barriers getting in the way of “yes”.
- Lack of product knowledge appropriate to the interaction of the person you are talking to.
Fix these, and the sale should be pretty easy.
Oct 24, 2010 | Collaboration, Customers, Innovation, Leadership, Social Media, Strategy
Creating and managing a development portfolio is a critical factor in the success of most commercial enterprises, but one that is done poorly in many I have seen. Some recent with a client struggling with the challenge for his organization served to clarify my thoughts, and assisted his organisation to develop a portfolio discipline that appears to be working well.
Success is much more than just using a few tools, of which there are many, it is about how the enterprise at its core deals with ambiguity, trade-offs, and the challenge of being frustrated and wrong a lot of the time, whilst being sufficiently resilient to keep on batting, and batting hard. As Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind” and nothing creates chance like persistence tempered with learning from each experience.
Below are some of the things that appear to me to be of importance
- Have a clear strategy. Without a clearly articulated business strategy that has commitment from those responsible for implementation, how can you possibly have a Product development and commercialization portfolio with any hope of success?
- Self awareness. Know what you do not know as well as what you do know, and where the knowledge about what you do not know may reside, particularly if it is with a competitor.
- Externalities. Understand the forces driving developments that may create opportunities in the industries you target, and the commercial and competitive imperatives that drive the decision making of individual customers and potential customers in those industries.
- People. Have access to great people, both internal and external in a variety of ways to extract a range of informed views and data upon which to build a case. Use the emerging communication tools to link these people and leverage their knowledge and experience
- Sponsorship. Ensure there is a senior level executive sponsor for each project that emerges from the pack. This person should have the passion, knowledge and position to carry the case for resource allocation, risk management, and strategic fit to the senior decision maker in the enterprise.
- Endless polishing. Keep polishing the portfolio, it will never be a completed exercise, it is a live entity always, and needs TLC. Part of the polishing is creation of a “carpark” which captures ideas, issues, technologies, and all the sometimes random stuff that can create that “Eureka” moment when things suddenly come together in a new way. Revisit the carpark regularly.
- PDCA. Be prepared to experiment, trial, look for insights, learn by doing, but be aggressive about performance, and relegation and promotion to and from the carpark, and further through the development process, and learn from all that experience.
- Customers. Engage customers as early and as often as possible, after all, they are the ones whose problems your product is supposed to solve, and they are usually full of problems and improvement ideas, some of which may be of value to you.
- Dare to be different. No successful new product did the job just the same as something that already exists, that is just a price-fight, differentiation is fundamental to success.
- NPD is everybody’s job. Product development and idea evolution happens holistically, not by functional line, and it must be a priority for every stakeholder in and around the enterprise, not just something that requires attendance by the marketing personnel at a meeting every second Tuesday at 10am .
There you go, sounds pretty easy!
Oct 19, 2010 | Customers, Leadership, Management, Marketing
The scary thing about competition is that someone always loses, even if it is only an opportunity. Many would like to believe that we should all be friends together to save the pain, but outside the public sector, it does not happen like that.
Successfully competing is down to delivering superior value to customers at a cost less than the customers best alternative. To do that in this connected world where transaction costs are disappearing the whole enterprise needs to be focused on what it is that the customer values.
Sounds pretty simple, but how rarely I see it
