IS YOUR BUSINESS IN DANGER FROM TOO MUCH SUCCESS?

So you wake up one morning and realize the products and services you sell  have become commodities? You can only sell on price.  

What happened to your customer’s enthusiasm about what you and your company have to offer?

Many business owners never realize, or realize too late, that the early short term success they attain with their company can seriously impact the potential for long term growth.  If this sounds strange to you, let me explain.

When your new business launched, your primary objective was probably short term success to confirm the viability of the business and to create positive cash flow.

With this initial success came the need to manage the business on a day to day basis.

Sounds straight forward and logical, but this places different demands on you and your management team that could easily cause you to become highly reactionary to your customers and take you and your team away from the spark and passion the business was founded upon.  These day to day demands shape the personality of the company and the personnel who manage it.  

When this happens, your management team can easily become inwardly focused to “meet schedules and budgets” and respond to what your customers ask for .  

The founding products or services become dated or stale and soon the business is competing on price, not value.

It is important for business owners to know why their customers value their offerings.

Your customer’s input about your product and service portfolio can lead to a deeper understanding of how each contributes to the customers’ success.  This knowledge opens up the opportunity to go beyond the initial offering and grow the business through meeting ever changing customer needs.

Although it has become a cliché, it is a fact that if  you do not actively pursue the evolution of your own products and services, someone else will.

The competition will create a more valuable offering for your customer and take the business away from you.

Proactive, versus reactive, management is the foundation of long term growth and success.  Reacting to customer wants versus understanding and providing unique solutions to customer needs can make all the difference in the long term viability of a company.

So what is the difference between a want and a need?  Great question!

A simple example is:   I want to own a brand new luxury car for my day to day transportation but in reality what I really need is a reliable vehicle.  Statements about customer wants are very often their attempt at a describing what they feel they really need.  

It is only through focused dialogue with multiple contacts at the customer that the true needs, and more importantly, what is causing or driving those needs can be uncovered.  

There has been a trend over the last 20 years, especially with many American companies, to focus a significant percentage of resources on the efficiency of their operations, through the use of Lean and Six Sigma techniques.

Although efficiency is important, it also becomes very dangerous when it becomes the primary focus.

The recent explosion in seminars and conferences that attempt to provide theories about how a company should handle innovation demonstrate how this trend can distract your company’s capability to stay in touch with your customers’ needs.  

Providing unique solutions to these real needs is how you add true value to your customers.  

The single most important aspect of this loss of focus on customer value and the evolving marketplace is the realization that your company may have lost the ability to innovate.

This ability to innovate is critical to your business’ long term sustainability by providing your customer with superior value over the long term.