You want to grow. So you direct the salespeople to make
calls twice as frequently on their accounts. Not much
happens.
Next, you increase your advertising budget by 10 percent.
Not much happens.
Then you increase your promotional budget and customers
increase their immediate purchases, but sales droop as they
work off the increased inventory they are carrying.
There has to be a better way to grow. What is it?
Attract new types of customers to purchase your offerings.
Most organizations answer the question of who else needs
their offerings by describing more of the same kinds of
customers or beneficiary recipients in some other location.
That answer is helpful as far as it goes, but it doesn't
exhaust the potential.
Keep going. Who else?
Rather than just scratching your head, invite customers,
suppliers, distributors, partners, employees, and those in
the communities you serve to help you.
Procter & Gamble (P&G) got a tip from an employee's family
member about a great product available in Asia for removing
scum from bathroom tiles. On further investigation, the
product was discovered to be made of automobile insulation
produced by BASF, which was already a P&G supplier.
It's highly likely that BASF didn't think of P&G as a
potentially large user for its automobile insulation
material. The story ends happily for BASF thanks to that
P&G family tip.
I once met a marketing specialist for a large company whose
job was to find new uses for the company's products that
would attract more customers. When asked how many new
customers this activity had attracted, the specialist
stroked his chin and softly said, "One." When asked how
much product this one customer had bought, the quantity
turned out to be tiny.
Based on its track record, this company would have done
better to have abandoned its inside-out search.
Here are some questions that may help you find new users as
you reach out to your stakeholders for ideas:
1. What other attributes does your offering have that no
one is yet using?
2. What new, valuable attributes could be added to your
offering?
3. How could your offering be adjusted to substitute for
something else?
4. How could your offering be combined with something else
to add benefits for new users?
5. What can you eliminate from your offering to make it
less expensive to use than a currently preferred
alternative?
Good luck with your hunting for new types of customers!
Copyright 2007 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of six books including The 2,000 Percent Squared
Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The Ultimate
Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .
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