by Donald
Mitchell
http://www.2000percentsolution.com
©
2008
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
