Although most can easily understand examples where time and
economic benefits are measurable, you also have to keep in
mind that noneconomic benefits can be important, too. When
Estee Lauder formulated the Clinique line of cosmetics and
toiletries, it provided hypoallergenic relief for those who
wanted a better appearance and less discomfort from using
common beauty products.
These benefits can also extend to aesthetics. Realizing
that many of its most loyal end users were graphic
designers, Apple Computer began to offer more stylish
designs and colors for its Macs. Sales quickly rose for the
company as a result of these more physically attractive
machines.
Notice that some of these benefits, like faster time to
market, would be obvious from talking to almost any
customer. Other benefits, like having a temporary office in
bookstores, would probably not have been identified by
talking to customers. Because of the relative invisibility
of many potential value benefits, traditional market
research and market analysis methods will be insufficient
to find the best value benefits to add.
That's another reason why you should keep an open mind for
now as you develop hypotheses about types of values to add.
Trial and error on a limited, inexpensive scale will
usually turn out to be critical to your identification of
the new value benefits that you should offer. Until you
have the idea, though, you cannot begin any experiments to
test it. You do need to expand your sources of ideas. This
is a numbers game, and all perspectives help.
Several methods are useful to perceiving what is a blank to
current customers. First, begin with direct observation.
Simply watch how customers and potential customers (and on
through to the end user) use your product or services. You
will be amazed at all of the awkward ways that they have to
go about making your offerings useful to them.
Then, go watch what else they do during the work and
personal day. You'll find they have problems with other
products and services that you can solve at little or no
cost.
If you had visited a book store, you would have seen people
camped out on the floor leaning against bookcases reading
books to find the right one while they sipped take-out
coffee they had bought someplace else. When their cramped
bodies couldn't take it any more or they found the right
book, they left.
In many cases, the sore body was the limitation to selling
more books. You don't have to sell many more books in a
year to pay for a chair and the space it rests on. If the
customers could get their take-out coffee from you, you
saved them the time to go to a take-out coffee outlet, and
increased the time they had to shop for and read books.
Second, go out and live these people's lives and walk in
these people's shoes. Try to do what they do in the best
ways you can think of. Then, imagine how you could change
what you are then doing to make life simpler, easier, and
better for them.
Third, do role playing. Pretend for several hours that you
are a specific person who doesn't buy from your company, or
even your customer's customer. Once you have totally
immersed yourself in that mind-set, think about why you
don't want to do business with your real company.
Then imagine what it would take to get your attention and
keep it so that you would try a different offering. While
in this potential customer role-playing mode, also ask
yourself what would keep your business if your current
supplier responded.
Fourth, think about metaphors. You will probably find it
easiest to start with ones that personally inspire you that
will probably inspire others. Questions can help you find
helpful metaphors.
For example, what was the best product or service you ever
bought? Then, you can think about that offering as a
metaphor for what you might offer. Obviously, the
bookstores could have used a five-star European hotel with
lots of service and comfort as a metaphor for their
business.
Fifth, imagine that you can totally customize your
products, services, and the ways that you market and
deliver them to quickly match what any one person wants.
This is very important because the ultimate secret of
achieving competitive advantage is to do just this more
effectively than anyone else.
Having identified a method, how could you employ that
method in ways that do not increase your costs, but do
improve value? This may seem like a pipe dream at first,
but many companies that take this approach also have been
able to put in processes to support custom solutions that
actually lower costs.
Amazon's listing service for new, collectible, and used
books offered for sale by its customers complements its own
stock, draws more potential customers, and provides a very
high profit contribution similar to what eBay enjoys
because so selling and delivery costs are eliminated in the
process.
Sixth, by this point, you will probably have exhausted a
lot of what you as a single person can learn. If you have
encouraged others to follow these same steps, you can now
begin to usefully have brainstorming sessions even more
effectively where your individual ideas will strike
responsive chords in the minds of others to produce ideas
that neither of you could have had alone. If you are not
familiar with this process, you should become familiar with
the well-documented guidelines for such sessions before
using this method.
Seventh, with work document shareware, you can also post
these kinds of questions and observations on a company
intranet and encourage everyone in the company to post
their own ideas and comments. Extend this questioning to
include suppliers, customers, shareholders, and partners
through the Internet, and you will see a geometric increase
in richness of ideas and refinement of promising directions.
Copyright 2008 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 seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, 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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