Category Archives: Strategy

Useful and valuable

in Innovation, Marketing, Strategy

An innovation happens when an idea is both useful and valuable to the customer.

One of the things that stuck with me from reading Braden Kelley’s book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire is something that is rarely mentioned when deciding on an idea to execute: the distinction between useful and valuable.

Usually we have products and services that are useful but not valuable. But then again what’s useful and valuable to you is not the same for me. For example, Evernote is both useful and valuable to me because I can write, save, edit, clip notes and access them from wherever I am. Evernote is a tool for the information obsessed like me. I’m on the fanatic end of their users where I can’t imagine going back to not using Evernote.

On the other hand, an opposite example is Facebook,while useful is not really valuable to me. I could care less if Facebook disappears tomorrow. But if Twitter disappeared tomorrow I would feel empty. Twitter is both useful and valuable to me for many reasons.

Like I said, this might not be the same for you.…

Madness creates opportunity

in Marketing, Strategy

Act deliberately crazy and no one will want to compete against you.

If you’ve read The Thirty Six Chinese Stratagems, then you’re familiar with the statement above. Here’s the stratagem if you don’t know it:

Feign madness but keep your balance
Hide behind the mask of a fool, a drunk, or a madman to create confusion about your intentions and motivations. Lure your opponent into underestimating your ability until, overconfident, he drops his guard. Then you may attack.

Grant McCracken wrote a post a few days ago that shines a light how Skechers is using said stratagem to compete against Nike, it’s worth a read.…

What matters: Don’t waste your customers time

in competition, Marketing, Strategy

In the past month I spent close to 9 hours with support representatives from a couple of companies with whom I’ve had issues with. One is Sprint and the other is Dell.

While 9 hours in a month doesn’t seem like a lot, believe me it’s a lot. When I was in high school I worked at a call center as a tech support representative for Verizon Wireless, so believe me when I say that spending a lot of time on the phone trying to resolve an issue is incredibly annoying for both the customer and the support representative. Especially when you (the customer) doesn’t get the issue resolved. As a support representative you can either make a customers day or you can become the focus of their anger.

One question I ask representatives all the time, which they have no idea how to answer, is: Why do I have to repeat myself every time I’m transferred from one representative to the other?

Wouldn’t it be easier if the first person you talk to took your information, entered it onto ‘the system’ once and it remained there for everyone to access until your matter is solved? This way the next person who gets to talk to you knows what’s going on before you even open your mouth. No seriously, we’ve got the technology to do it we just need someone to start acting differently and do it. Vendor and clients messaging system in Woocommerce has figured this out and does it in their own kind of way! by having wordpress chat- fastest way to respond to your customers.

Believe me when I say that people take these calls for granted. As customers we know that whenever we call customer support we’re probably going  to spend a good amount of time on the phone. What if you (the biz) broke this expectation and actually made it less annoying when we call? Customers are annoyed before they even call! We often find ourselves too busy to deal with answering the phone too so we have started to use an answering service. It’s been a huge help, so if you’re strapped for time then give a service for that call answering a go.

The issue I had with Dell also got me thinking about the element of time. I was without my laptop for 2 weeks and more is coming because another hardware issue came with the fix so I have to send it back.  As I was telling my friend Arnold Beekes about it he suggested that Dell should have provided me with a temporary laptop while mine was being fixed, similar to how car dealerships do when you bring your car in for a check up.

These are the types of things that make a difference in the customer experience but some companies don’t figure it out until it’s too late. What if companies got annoyed when they felt they’ve wasted their customers time? What type of behaviors would emerge? In what ways would their business strategy change? How would their business model change?

Personally the issue of wasting people’s time does not sit well with me, so whenever I feel others (can be company or person) are wasting my time it annoys me. It also works the other way, if I feel that I’m wasting your time it bothers me.

My point is that time is such a precious resource and if you (the biz) mindlessly waste the customers time, you are ignoring a valuable opportunity to exceed their expectations because now more than ever we are more time constrained; we have more activities vying for out attention. If you can make the time customers do spend with you more valuable, you will make a small difference in their lives and that really matters 🙂

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Make the common uncommon

in Creativity, Strategy

How do you stand out in the commoditizied world of candies?

If you’re Hotlix you make insect candy. Yup, that’s right. Hotlix is the creator of creations such as the Strawberry flavored Scorpion Sucker, which has a real scorpion in it’s center. I just recently found out about them from the video below which shows how they make their creations, but Hotlix has been around for 20 years! Check it out:

This post is not about Hotlix, it’s about how to stand out. Notice that Hotlix makes candy but with a twist. It mixes somethings that is deliciously edible with something that just doesn’t make sense to eat. Quite simply they make something that is common (candy), uncommon (candy + bugs). It makes for an interesting combination that’s also an instant conversation starter. And quite memorable indeed because the marketing is embedded into the product which also helps create word of mouth!

That’s the secret. A simple way to stand out is to look at your business and think about all the things that are common and see how you can make them uncommon. De-commodities yourself!

Prepare for the unexpected

in competition, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy

Imagine that you are a pilot and you have to fly through a 5 mile canyon upside down. It’s actually kind of hard to imagine because it’s not something you’re trained to do but it’s something that could happen in a real life situation. It’s a scenario that’s outside your direct experience, you find it hard to accept it as possible and even worse adapting to it.

Now think about it this way:

What if businesses were judged on their ability to create ‘happiness for customers’? What if all those like buttons had less to do with becoming a fan and more to do with specific actions an organization took to actually make a customer happy? What if you hired people based on how happy they’ll make your customers? What  if there were a ‘customer happiness index’ dashboard (Tweetdeck) and we’d all have access to it just like the stock market? What if businesses were penalized for wasting people’s time?

Imagine how every business would behave.

Same thing right? How can this be possible?

These may seem like outrageous scenarios but it’s definitely something we should be thinking about. As I argued before, delivering happiness is not business as usual, all it takes for things to change is for someone somewhere to start acting differently. This someone is Zappos, and pretty soon others will join their crusade.

This is not a new idea, but it’s been so long since it was replaced by impersonal mass marketing that it seems like new and it has taken everyone by surprise.

Zappos ‘delivering happiness’ strategy didn’t come out of a week long brainstorming session, it came about by the desire to build a company that’s designed for both life and work happiness.

This is a dramatic change from the familiar and it does provide a useful lesson for both identifying and exploiting change:

The importance of recognizing when the system is stuck. In this case the idea that businesses exist purely to make a profit. If you flip that script upside down, other options reveal themselves. Options nobody else can anticipate, strategies nobody can think of, ideas waiting for an owner to call their own.

Just like scripts become obsolete, so to do ideas have an expiration date. Think about what would be the opposite of doing what you currently do, how would that look and what options reveal themselves.

Key takeaway: Prepare for the unexpected and learn to recognize when an idea has reached it’s expiration date because if you don’t, you’ll be caught in an unfamiliar situation.

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How to create a new business model

in Creativity, Innovation, Strategy

Competition in industries is essentially competition between business models. A recent , which led to a post about the , reminded me of a great creative exercise to help you look at your and other industry’s dominant business model as a lego kit.

You can then break them down and, like a builder, reconnect them like building blocks to create new business concepts.…