Category: Marketing - Kevin Minne

Innovation or Crash and Burn?

6/2/2017

Something was missing as Heather walked into the familiar department store but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. What is it, she thought, same store front, the red lettering and logos were everywhere, the cosmetic counter was in the same location and so were the clothing, the kitchen ware and the linens but it was definitely different. The clothing racks were unkempt and the shelves of neatly folded sweaters and designer jeans now had the look of a teenagers bedroom after a sleep over. As she took the escalator up to the kitchen department and began to stroll through the isles it was immediately obvious that the usual knowledgeable and helpful staff was completely absent. It was as if all the staff had gone on break at the same time. Through the years this store had exerted a tremendous amount of energy to create a very specific set of expectations in their customers and that level of service and quality is exactly what Heather had come to expect. Growing in frustration as she looked for someone to help her with a simple question about cookware, she thought: if all the reasons I've been coming here for so long are gone why would I come back?

This fable is an example of one company's effort to innovate out their existing business model in order to cut costs and attract new customers but it might be at the expense of their core customer. The consequences of this type of radical innovation can be catastrophic if it doesn't work!! In this case "loyal" as opposed to "fickle price shopping" customers are some of the most valuable assets a company can have and shouldn't be expected to stay loyal when all they have become accustomed to is no longer there!!

Barriers to Product Adoption

2/17/2017

Make no mistake, new is the enemy of habits and comfort. New products are often misunderstood and rejected without much thought because they are at odds with conventional wisdom and cultural norms. There really is no one size fits all solution for anything. Barriers to entry into any new market is solely in the mind of each customer.
However, humans do run in packs and once the cultural differences are understood the barriers to market entry get much smaller. For instance, it would seem that a vacuum cleaner should be very universal in its appeal. But as it turns out Americans want their vacuum to be loud in order to prove that it is powerful and doing its job. Whereas, their Japanese equivalents who mostly live in close communities and apartments, will pay more for quiet and smooth operation just for the social benefits. Once you understand those preferences, market entry into these two markets is rather simple.
Too often we don't take the time to identify the barriers before developing or innovating. The barriers are more often social than technological. Understanding customers (not just asking them what they want) is paramount.

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

All Products Need to be Action Products!

12/2/2016

Do you know what the number one selling movie genre is….. drumroll please….. it’s not romance, it’s not comedy, .... it’s action! That's right folks, people love action movies, action is easy to relate to, it's exciting and it takes us out of our ordinary lives for a quick escape. When we read action in a book it’s easy to visualize. Take a trick from the writers guild, instead of telling people about your product, help them see your product in action. Products with action sell better, because people can visualize them getting work done! (Work is an action verb that is why we buy products in the first place.)
Can you turn your products into action verbs or are they just static? Peace of mind is not an action so if you are selling peace of mind your product is severely handicapped! For instance if your product is a refrigerator warranty= give that refrigerator a face lift, or life insurance= give your family a warm cuddly bear hug, membership to an association= getting the combination that unlocks the vault. It might seem a bit corny but when you make it easy for customers to see your product in action that is the best way to help your customers take action!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

Business Picasso

11/11/2016

Have you ever looked at the results of your work and thought….that’s art? Maybe it was at the end of a challenging sales call or an off-site weekend strategy session or the completion of a complex, multifaceted project. Real art takes work, lots of work and lots of practice. Maybe that's why they call it artwork because wherever you see something beautiful and evidence of unique design, craftsmanship and vision you can be sure there was lots of effort and labor to bring it about!

There is art “work” in figure skating, in a gymnastics routine, in music, in writing and yes even in a beautifully orchestrated business. I confess I have been having an affair with Starbucks for quite some time now! No I'm not there everyday and not even every week and I don't just go there for the coffee. I love the buzz of the atmosphere, I love the unique designs of each store, to watch an energized crew kick out a dizzying array of caffeinated elixirs with amazing speed and good-humored banter. When you get to a good cafe and watch it work, it is truly an orchestra of art, from the rhythm of the morning rush to the slow groove of the mid-day sip and good book. Unfortunately, most of us don't look at our work as a form of art. It's just work, and at the end of day, work takes energy, but art can give it back. Beauty has its own reward! Sometimes I have to get away from my daily work of managing and writing and selling and listening and learning and directing to create something with my hands that feels like art. Because when I get done art gives back, it's like renewable energy.

Too often we go through our workday trying to minimize the amount of effort we expend so that we have something leftover for the precious moments outside of our jobs and work life. But what would happen if we begin to look at all of our work from the shuffling of paperwork, the filing, the marketing, the accounting, the managing, the problem-solving, the mentoring, the communicating, the office organizing, the brainstorming, the product development and even the cleanup, as art work? What if we began to arrange the flow and the energy and rhythm of our work with the kind of pains taking care of a gifted composer? If we all began to create art and not just work, what would be the economic, emotional and social effect on our workplace, our families and our communities? We could give our customers many reasons to buy from us instead of just one!

Remember, if all Starbucks did was serve coffee in a cup like McDonalds I would stay home and their multibillion dollar revenue stream wouldn't exist! All Howard Schultz (the founder of Starbucks) did was turn coffee into art, why else would we pay over five times the price of a McDonalds cup? Creating real art takes lots of energy but it can also energize an entire workforce and the customers and communities we serve! Art will always have much higher value than just work, so don't stop until your work becomes art!!

Let us help you turn your business into art, call today to set up a consultation!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

Stop Listening to your Customers!

11/4/2016

Stop listening to your customers and start observing. Paco Underhill's brilliant book “Why We Buy," is filled with hard evidence of shoppers doing the opposite of what they say. And employees often think that more money is a major key to job satisfaction when in reality it’s way down the list. So, just listening without observing can be very misleading! It’s only when you take the time to observe and ask questions in order to really understand the problems customers are trying to solve (rather than the solutions they think they need) that you can invent some really great new solutions!
It’s the innovators job to see through the noise and come up with the innovative solution rather than just produce what the customer says they want. It’s very much like Henry Ford when he said, “if I had asked people what they wanted they would've asked for a faster horse.” But instead of listening to their demands he solved their speed problems and much, much more! Even the late Steve Jobs of Apple fame said “customers don't know what they want until you show them.” (I think most of us can agree with that, since we didn't know we needed an iPad or iPhone until we saw all the great solutions embedded in the device.) Getting to know the problems your customers are facing intimately (both inside and outside your company) will help you do that. There is a reason focus groups flop, many would-be customers think they know what they want but it's the actual shopping experience and the surprises they encounter while in the store that account for the additional sixty percent of purchases that were unplanned. According to Paco we begin to buy when we have an experience with the product as a solution in our minds, then when we touch it we begin to own it even more, long before the monetary transaction takes place.
If you can create a way for customers to try before they buy (begin the experience of owning) before plunking down money you will find you are able to close a lot more sales. Like the car dealership that lets you take home the new car without buying, it's a lot harder to give it up when it's been parked in your garage. The same goes for managers trying to inspire or induce employees to buy in to a new program or system change. Employees who have a chance to experiment with change or new systems before the mandatory rollout are far more likely to embrace and own the change than those who are just asked to trust management and make big leaps of faith.
Again, real research and observation is the key to break through innovation!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

Six ways to identify a”Free" Addict

9/16/2016

Are your products and services competing with the feel-good feeling of free? I don't know about you, but I have to be really careful about giving away free stuff, because free stuff really ain't free! Free stuff always has a cost. Just remember, there are people out there who just love chasing the feeling they get from something free. For them, “free” is not the gateway drug to becoming a paying customer, for them “free” is the product they are looking for!! Free is all they're interested in, and the minute your product or service stops being free they stop being your customer. These are the “free” junkie’s. If you want to get paid for your value, you have to identify and attentively serve those customers who really need and are willing to trade their valuable, hard earned, dollars for the satisfaction value of your product.
Now certainly there is something enticing about free and some little gift can be a great way to entice customers to examine further the value of your product or service. But if you find that all you're doing is giving away the gift and no one is buying your product then you are reaching the wrong customers.
The $64,000 question is how do you tell the difference between a “free” junkie and a real, potential, value buying, customer? Here are six warning signs to help you identify who’s just a “free” junkie and who's not:

A “free” junkie will almost always ask about “free” first!
A "free" junkie will not press for details about the product!
A "free" junkie will not be concerned about outcomes and results!
The problem a "free" junkie is trying to solve with your product, isn't very big!
A “free” junkie rarely has any history buying your type of product or service!
A "free" junkie will never ask about a money back guarantee, because they never plan on giving you any money!

Use these six “free” filters to help you get paid for your value! And remember, part of the satisfaction value your customers will get from your product comes from the work they put into it!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

Trust Building Time Warp

8/12/2016

Jack Welch of General Electric fame says Truth and Trust are the two most important words in business. Mr. Welch has a powerful point, because all business has elements of risk and possibly the biggest risk is in the relationships. Businesses that focus on building trust and truth into their relationships (both within the company and without) will eliminate a large portion of the risks and uncertainty of doing business. So, the question becomes, what can we all do to bring those two words to life in our everyday work?
Considering that we are once again in the heat of a presidential battle to see who will be elected the next president of the United States we should take note. We are hearing lots of promises but one thing we know about politics is that many of the promises made will not be kept (unfortunately, this is also true in business all too often). Still, there is big demand for making promises, we the people like to hear promises even though the chance of follow through might be pretty low. A good promise is the beginning of building trust but unfortunately it is not the end. The completion of a promise is the resulting trust that comes from all the hard work of delivering what’s been promised. You could say that the very purpose of a promise is to build trust!
The promise really is the easy part, it’s just words, but it is still a vital part of building trust. You can’t build the oh-so-valuable trust in business on just the delivery, you must have the two parts to build trust, one the promise and two the delivery. (The ability to make a promise turn into reality is what builds trust and credibility.) Now we have all heard that building trust takes time. But what if it is not the time element that builds trust but rather the actions and events that take place in a period of time that really count? (I’m not likely to trust someone I have just met once every two years). If we could create a star trek like time warp and shorten the time it takes to build trust in a sales or working relationships wouldn’t that be cool and give the would be “trust builder” a huge innovative edge? Well maybe this isn’t science fiction and there actually are ways to do that. Here is the accelerated trust builder solution, since it is the truth in our promises that builds trust, we need to focus on:

Making promises that our customers really care about. (There must be real value that comes from delivering our promises.)
Making only the promises we know we can keep (no matter how tempting it is to tell people what they want to hear, trust comes from truth even when it’s not good news).
Make lots of promises come true! (Quantity builds credibility and they don’t all have to be about your product or service.)
Breaking up our BIG promises into smaller parts. (Again quantity builds momentum and the more ways we give customers to judge us the quicker they will be to trust us.)

Truth and trust are certainly not new in business but they are still the most valuable. Anything we can do to build them into our business relationships will affect the bottom line.

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

Market Share War

6/10/2016

The famous Chinese General, Sun Tzu once said “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Fighting is very costly and a direct attack on a competitors market share can be a very costly fight. Once the competition knows you are going to make war they will get ready to fight. So the supreme way to win the competition war is to keep your competitors from recognizing that you are even competing with them. The Swiss watch making industry invented the quartz watch but gave it away, not knowing that it was going to be their biggest competitor and eventually steal their market share. Kodak was the greatest film maker in the world and they invented the digital camera and ignored it, not knowing that it was going to be their biggest competitor and eventually steal their market share.
Having a strategy inside a strategy even works on the inside of a company. Paul Oneil the CEO who engineered the historic turn around of the giant aluminum manufacturer Alcoa, had a strategy inside of a strategy. Paul knew that the poor employee safety record was something everyone from the union and management could agree needed fixing. But what he also knew was that the same new habits that he established for safety could be used to improve communication, processes and products and ignite collaboration across the entire company. (See "the Power of Habit" Charles Duhigg). Even the ancient story of the trojan horse was an example of winning the battle because the enemy didn't see the horse as a threat but as a gift.
If you can differentiate your product or service enough to make it look like a different product than your competitors, then you might be able to avoid a costly fight and go unnoticed as you gain customers and market share. And remember, just like a product life cycle that has a birth, growth to maturity and an end so does a strategy. So, keep your strategy fresh and hidden from competitors but clear to your team.

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

Innovating with Strategy

6/3/2016

For some businesses just having a strategy….. would be an innovation rather than reacting to customer demands and market wiggles. Even better would be having a strategy that establishes long term goals for your company and your products. If Henry ford or Steve Jobs of Apple hadn't had a strategy that reached beyond just “satisfying the customer” we would have missed out on some pretty cool life changing inventions. So, having the right strategy that is simple and clear can solve lots of problems and be an enormous energizer for everyone in the company. However, I don’t mean simple as in, “we want to grow ten percent per year.” That doesn’t bring to mind anything specifically actionable like what, how, where, who and when. “Growth” is not even clear enough to be a strategy, since growth for growths sake is meaningless. The reason for growth, such as gaining market share to lower operating costs or to gain pricing advantage is far more clear and simple but it still lacks the how and where etc.
Gaining market share is clearly a prize because of those advantages but how to do it is what’s tricky! David didn’t meet Goliath on his terms and going head to head with the market leader is usually not a winning strategy for gaining market share. Think Walmart, or Southwest Airlines, they started out being the little fish but their brilliant but simple strategy was to never go near the big fish until they were big enough and better. So, if you are one of the little fish selling a product that’s pretty much the same as the big fish then learn the lesson of Walmart because where you grow and how you grow are just as important as why!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291

Product or Sales, which wins the market war?

5/6/2016

In the poetic words of Guy Kawasaki (former Apple marketing guru) “I’ve sold good stuff and I sold crap and it is a lot easier to sell good stuff!” There is no question that there needs to be a great sales and marketing team onboard for any business that wants to be a success. However, there is a question of how much the responsibility for company success relies on great sales and marketing and how much relies on the quality of the product. According to the late Steve Jobs of Apple, the companies that eventually fail are the ones that are run by sales and marketing people. In other words the formula for success is an obsession with improving the product to delight the consumer and not on maximizing cost reductions and volume in order to maintain profit margins. Intuit is one company that has had a resurgence in the number of new product ideas, improved customer ratings and company success since moving their goal beyond designing for customer satisfaction to designing for delight.
So, make it easy on your sales team and obsess over your product WOW factor and the user experience and you will guarantee your company’s future success!

By: Kevin Minne
InnovationGrowthSystems.com
720-354-0291