For many of us, the above statement would seem to be the complete opposite to the golden rule we have ingrained into us for the entirety of our careers—the customer comes first. Countless leaders would advocate that the key to business success is a consistent flow of satisfied consumers, dedicated to purchasing the products and services a company offers, and encouraging the practice of repeat purchases. However, we are going to shed some light on leaders who argue that to achieve customer happiness, priority should be placed on the people that deliver the services to customers: your team members. In this post, we‘re going to be making the case for why the customer should come second and where business leaders should shift their focus to in order to create success. A simple philosophy that many successful leaders, including Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, follow today is ‘the customer comes second, your people come first’. This is where the business success cycle comes in, a model that illustrates where leaders need to invest their energy and focus in order to create great success and results for the business. Many successful businesses today are where they are because they prioritise customer happiness. Of course, customers should be placed top of the priority list as their role can decide if a business is a success or failure, based on their dedication to a company—however, success also relies on the quality of service they receive as well as how engaged your team members are, who actually deliver the service. Your New Business PhilosophyA new philosophy we encourage you to embrace in order to attain business success is investing energy in your team, the people that make up your company. The key to attaining consumer satisfaction starts by transferring your focus to the people that face your customers, who are a walking representation of your business. The reason for this is, by placing your efforts on your team first, they start to feel valued, cared for and supported. Your team become proud to work for your business and in return, by equipping them with the tools needed to perform a great job they are going to be happy and work with a smile, passing on that happiness and energy to your customers. Devoting efforts towards enhancing the health and happiness of your team is an untapped business opportunity for many that has a flow on impact to customer satisfaction. Simply put, ‘happy people make happier customers’ in fact a survey by Gallup ‘The State of the American Workplace’ reported that team members who are engaged and driven are more likely to boost customer relationships, resulting in a 20% growth in sales. If energy is placed on team engagement, this can help foster company loyalty and in doing so, build trust and respect between yourself and your team. Team members who feel valued naturally would want to replicate the care they receive towards the customer and create strong relationships and when well trained to build those connections, will benefit the business. Your team comes first, your customers come second. So what does this exactly mean in terms of where you should be putting your energy to succeed? The answer comes down to the culture of the organisation. Success relies on your company culture and a ‘people first culture’ is now proving to be a must-have in businesses in order to retain talent, gain a positive reputation, increase productivity and performance. The principle of taking care of your team—and therefore your customer—is at the forefront for creating a great place to work, where individuals are valued, active, and growing. All efforts placed on what happens inside your business, is ultimately felt on the outside by your customers. Have you adopted a team-focussed culture within your business? What practices do you have in place that create a great environment to work in? Feel free to share your strategies and practices in the comments below! Our Partner and Director at Corporate Edge, John Colbert discusses the importance of focussing energy on team growth and development to achieve business success. Take three minutes to watch and feel free to share this with colleagues or anyone you know who might get value from this.
So if your focus is on fostering a strong culture within your business and improving team productivity, enrol through this link here.
Joe Pulizzi has a lot to say about content marketing. His recent post on Copyblogger is what he calls a "how-to-think" post, and he proposes a different approach to the subject. 5 Steps to Revising Your Content Marketing Strategy to Attract and Retain Future Customers reverses the traditional timeline for most businesses. Most businesses will start with the product. A great invention is produced and the marketing department is given the task of getting that product known to the world. A lot of time, effort, and a huge budget goes into blogs, ads, infographics, commercials, and the rest of it, with the hope that an audience for that content will develop as people learn about the product and decide they want to buy it. A Different StrategyMr. Pulizzi suggests that instead of this model, it would be better to develop the audience. Then, as you get to know the people who are invested in listening to you, the products are developed to meet their needs. His suggested steps are:
Then, as the man says,
What do you think of this idea? I have to say that it seems a bit chicken-&-eggy to me because most products are the result of a perceived need in some type of audience. I do think that building your email marketing carefully is important because an opt-in email list is composed of people who already want to know what you have to say. Photo Credit: Product or Audience/shutterstock
If you were interested in moving to San Francisco (or pick any city), would you pack up your bags, hopefully find a friend’s couch to crash on, and then find a job? Or would you wait until you secured a job there before even thinking of moving out of town? And would your response change if you were asking this as a fresh university graduate in your twenties versus an experienced professional in your forties? Or if you were single versus in a relationship? Or if you have dependents? This layer of “personal life” is just one of many factors that would likely go into the decision of how/whether you would move. In a similar vein, when asking ourselves, “What comes first – the product or the customer,” there is really no right answer. Not surprisingly, it’s dependent on each individual/company’s situation, such as what are the company’s short and long-term product and corporate strategy, current and aspirational position in its market, and organizational structure. Awareness of these areas can provide guidance to more appropriate courses of action because many times, it’s not just executing on the decision, but how the execution occurs that can make the difference. A typical illustration of this are all the companies that benefited from “second-mover advantage” or being a “fast follower.” Below are three sample scenarios. There are obviously many variations that happen in the real world, but this post is meant to provide a perspective and food for thought for when we find ourselves asking this “what comes first” question. The reality is that not everything is within a product manager’s control (yes, it’s true). As a PM, one of the many things to consider is whether it makes sense to deliver our products within the situation we are in, or do we need to effect change in some areas and turn them to our advantage. “Would you like fries with that?”Do you already have an established client base and the company strategy is to sell more to them? Cross-selling (and up-selling) is pervasive across industries. In particular, transactional Industries like fast food (“would you like fries with that?) and retail (“don’t you want to protect your new tv with a 3 year warranty?”) excel at trying to maximize their customers’ transactions at the time of sale. With many companies experiencing the 80/20 rule, that 80% of their business comes from 20% of their customers, it’s not surprising that so many companies are trying to increase their share of wallet. For example, insurance companies offer bundled discounts the more lines of coverage you insure with them. Banks encourage their banking customers to apply for credit cards and loans with them by offering more competitive rates. Takeaway: Cross-selling is low-hanging fruit when you already have an established customer base. New customer acquisition costs can be pretty high. But with an established base, there is an assumption that you are already aware of your clients’ wants and needs and hopefully are already addressing those. So, to increase your share of wallet, you might need to get creative in what else they could need (enough to pay for it). There is more opportunity in this situation to allow for risk-taking in developing something your clients don’t already know they need. But it’s critical that you still keep an eye on churn as you want to keep your clients happy so that they will want to buy more from you! Some clients love being used as sounding boards and testing early releases. But there are many industries that are more comfortable with mature, widely-adopted products. Trying to release beta and v1 releases to them may take convincing. In that situation, it is important to consider who are the visionaries and early adopters among your clients who can help you vet out the product idea and design. And let’s not forget about the costs side of things. In this scenario, you also have room to “play” because you may not need to be as concerned about paying bills at the end of the month. The more mature product(s) are presumably contributing to the bottom line. It would also be important to recognize whether the new idea will require fundamental changes to supporting teams – would it require new sales expertise, a different fulfilment, training, or support approach, and much more. Are you (or is your company) ready or able to make the needed adjustments? Same product; different skinA variation of the above is cross-selling within the same client, but to different buyers. Do you have an established platform that requires little to moderate effort to update for a different audience? Selling to the sales team but now want to sell to the finance team? It’s not usually as easy as just updating terminology. But companies can leverage what they do have (a product that works, delivery or implementation infrastructure, etc) can provide offerings that are tailored to different groups within the same company. Atlassian, known for Jira and targeting developers and project managers, also expanded their reach in organizations with Confluence. The buyer may still be within IT, but the types of users greatly increased beyond the traditional developer/project manager functions. Salesforce.com utilizes its platform to deliver many different views of a client to the various teams within the organization ranging from sales to support to finance. Takeaway: As mentioned above, cross-selling within the client base is cost-efficient. But while these are the same clients, they are potentially different buyers. What makes their lives easier? Saves them time? Makes their stakeholders happier? If you haven’t sold to these buyers yet, then it may be worth considering whether your current products could be leveraged to meet their more immediate needs. “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them”This scenario encompasses a wide range of situations like new entrants to an established market, companies creating a new market, inventors and passionate product people trying to disrupt a market, and much more. Perhaps one of the biggest followers of this approach is Apple, which I’ll condense into Steve Jobs’ quote, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” If you fall into this category, it’s certainly not an easy road. But the rewards can be huge (as can be the downfall). While many start-ups fall in this category, it’s important to balance the reality of trying to create something new (which often takes time) with available funds. Some of the more traditional companies have seen the importance of R&D and taking risks, and so they have built their own research areas (Google X, Amazon Lab126) and also acquired the IP and talent from scrappy start-ups. Takeaway: For many products/companies under this scenario, they fell under the “they were ahead of their time” and unfortunately couldn’t get the market to recognize the value of the product in time. So while a customer isn’t always required to start the design of the product, it is still important to consider some level of market research/testing to see if it has legs enough to spend the effort in bringing it to market. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, sometimes, having a product before the customer isn’t the issue. It could be the way it goes to market. iRobot’s popular Roomba, the robotic vacuum that managed to make vacuuming a spectator sport, was launched a year after Electrolux launched their Trilobite product. But Trilobite was short-lived, presumably because it was 10 times more expensive than the Roomba! With the popularity of the Roomba, it’s clear that this was a product that was well-received, but it just needed to be at the right price point (and of course needed to work). There are many more cautionary tales such as this. So if research indicates something like pricing is the issue, perhaps the company thinks it’s important enough that it can be a loss leader. Or considerations can be made to determine how to help address costs. That’s why it’s important to know what your company’s goals and strategies are as well. Product managers have to consider so many internal and external factors when working on a product. If you find yourself in the situation where you are asking yourself whether you should find a customer or develop the product first, consider what is the situation in which you find yourself. Know your context; it’ll hopefully help guide you to the path you want to take. |