Redouble your Focus on Customer Needs
I was reading about Oracles layoff of sales people and consultants and a recent blog entry in Innovating to Win came to mind. It discusses innovation strategies for the global recession. The first theme was
Redouble your focus on customer needs
When cutting out the waste, cost cutting has its place. But as Tom Peter’s taught us, you can’t shrink your way to greatness. Put as much effort into focusing on your customer’s needs. Here are three areas to think about how you can improve your ability to meet your customer’s needs.
Certainly this includes clearly aligning the features of your product or service with the problem you are solving for the customer. Many products and services have suffered from feature bloat. Bells and whistles have been added to compete against other offerings. I bet many customers would be willing to pay less for a product that simply met their needs. And less expensive doesn’t have to mean less profitable. Southwest Airlines may be an example of this approach.
Another place to focus on your customer’s needs is to look at the lifecycle of your customer’s interaction with your product. They may have to identify a need, select a solution, purchase the solution, implement the solution, maintain it, pay for it, upgrade it, and trade it in or dispose of it. Really focusing on the entire customer experience with your product (not just with you) can improve your ability to create value for your customer without an increase in your costs.
Finally, understanding how your customer uses your offering can lead to opportunities to add more value. There is the story of the CEO of a drill making company who stood in front of his board and proclaimed, “No one wants to buy our drills!” The board was stunned. The CEO continued, “The want to drill holes in stuff to build stuff. We need to figure out how to help them do that.” My customers typically aren’t actually interested in project management or software development or technology delivery. What they are interested in is more profitably creating value for their customers. My goal is to help them do what they are interested in through project management, software development, and technology delivery.
Everything your business does should be focused on profitably creating value for your customers. This starts with understanding your customer’s needs. Focus on the required features, the customer’s experience with the offering, and the context your costomer experience when working with your offering. Find ways to focus on improvements in these areas. Focus on cost cutting in anything that doesn’t profitably add value to your customers.
Tags: Innovation
