Tag Archives: better products

Disrupt, produce, fulfil – boosting productivity

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From time to time I go looking for events where I might learn something new and get a different perspective.  I also try to combine going to these events with meeting a friend, so we can discuss the subject.  The LSE provides some great events and attracts interesting speakers.  I try to avoid famous politicians as they tend to only say what we have already heard.  I look out for people with expertise and something to say.  Especially if it is about something I know little about.

Timothy Massad Chairman of CFC

Timothy Massad with President Obama

Last night I went to hear Timothy Massad who has been on the front line of the U.S. effort to combat the financial crisis and reform the international financial regulatory system. He was appointed by President Obama as Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and was formerly as Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability at the U.S. Treasury. However, President-elect Trump will replace him as is customary with a new president.

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Attract don’t Extract

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attracting customers employees shareholders

I have spent all my working life believing that when organisations serve customers better and seek to help people, then they do better than organisations who just want to extract money from people. When I started work in 1979 it took me some years to realise that my view was not always shared by those whom I worked with.

I worked in marketing in food and drink (initially biscuits, then chocolate and then soft drinks). I saw my role as being to help the organisation to

  1. find out what matters to customers
  2. make products better by creating things that solved problems for people
  3. ensure products were profitable
  4. ensure products were available in the right places
  5. run marketing campaigns to let everyone know about them.

As a result, we would get more sales and customers would keep coming back.

Now 38 years later, I still think business is that simple. It is simple to understand. The challenge is to work with the people, the finances and the products to do it. This is the primary role of a business owner, a marketer or a CEO. This is what will attract more customers, grow profitable sales and maximise value for shareholders.

We were frequently told our job is to maximise shareholder value. For the management team that meant hit the quarterly numbers and ensure the company could pay dividends.

Maximising shareholder value

For me, maximising shareholder value means being more attractive, more visible and more available to more customers. But this costs money, so I kept running into people who were worried about adding cost to products without a guarantee of extra sales and were sceptical about the benefits of marketing spend when profits were under pressure. So for others maximising shareholder value was about cost control and financial management. The customer could easily get lost in these financial discussions.

Sound financial management and cost control are essential for success. But quite quickly financial discussions can start to view the customers as a target that we should extract more money from for the benefit of the shareholders. The discussions are about capturing loyal customers, seeing how far we can push up prices, how low can take the product quality. This mindset is an extractive mindset and not an attractive mindset.

Industry disruptors

What I have observed over the intervening years is that the best businesses are those that have the best reputations. This is linked to the most enduring growth and profit performance. They all start with great products that solve a problem for people. The are dedicated to better products. This is particularly true of industry disruptors

  • Easyjet disrupted European air travel with better flights (and cheaper ones) they made it easier to book and easier to travel. (Maybe they are becoming more extractive now they are more corporate)
  • First Direct created bank accounts where every customer is left feeling totally taken care of
  • Hiscox created insurance that pays out when you need it, with great claims handling and protects what you need
  • Uber created taxis you cn get hold of when you need them with no effort
  • Miracle Gro created gardening products that make it easier to
  • Dorset Cereals reversed years of cereal manufacturers engineering cheaper products with cheaper ingredients
  • Hotel Chocolat now fill our high streets with chocolate shops where Thorntons used to dominate
  • Redington did it for pensions investment management and have helped trustees to reduce and eliminate pension fund deficits

The attractive mindset knows that the business can only grow by attracting more customers.

Align shareholders, employees and customers

There is a commonly held belief that the interests of customers shareholders and employees are at odds with each other. This suggests there is a conflict between them

  • Shareholders want to give the customers less and charge them more
  • Employees want to work less and get paid more
  • Customers want to pay less and get more

This conflict does exist when you have an extractive mindset. My experience is the best businesses do not suffer from this conflict and the reason is that have an attractive mindset

Better products sell more and customers are very happy to pay higher prices for them. Prosperous growing businesses are fun places to work and attract better people. When the business seeks to attract more customers and seeks to attract better staff, this results in a virtuous circle of growth. When a business is working out how to extract more money from customers and get more for less from their staff, the business enters survival mode.

This blog and all my future posts are about observations on how this works, when it works, examples of it working and lessons we can learn from them. These lessons of the attractive mindset can be applied to business organisations, charity fundraising, political campaigns, club memberships or any organisation that exists as a group of people trying to get things done.

This is a hybrid of a campaign for better business and a series of practical insights you can use to make your organisation or business perform better.

I hope you will join me for the ride.

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Understand what really motivates us

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This weeks blog from Guy Watson of Riverford Organic farms is one of the best pieces of attractive thinking that I have seen for some time.  It is prompted by his reflections on the election aftermath.

He accurately describes the human condition.  This condition is why I believe that business organisations which set out to help customers solve problems (value adders) do better than those who set out to extract the most money from customers (value extractors).  Three statements that stand out for me are

  1. What I find so depressing … is the apparent ubiquitous cynical belief that appealing to personal greed is the only way to get anything done.
  2. Ultimately we all want to feel good about ourselves and at work this falls broadly into three areas: feeling we are learning and getting better at stuff, feeling some control over our lives and feeling a sense of purpose.
  3. My plea .. is to have a little faith in people; we’re not as shallow, selfish or as dumb as you seem to think. Show some trust, give us some hope and we might even surprise you.

If you take this thinking and apply it to attracting more customers it takes you to a very attractive place.  (N.B.  We also like their veg)

Re-blog of post from Guy Watson www.riverford.co.uk

I believe that given half a chance, most people, most of the time, are smarter, fairer, more generous and capable of more empathy than our institutions give us credit for. I found both the election campaigns and the result hugely depressing without really understanding why; with the exception of the Greens I feel no more aligned with the policies of the losers than the winners. On reflection I realise the reason for my gloom is a conviction that the institution with the most cynical view of our behavioural motivations is the modern Conservative party.

I’m guessing that, as someone already personally rich, I will be richer under an unfettered Conservative government; but I don’t expect to be happier. What I find so depressing about modern post-Thatcherite Conservatism (and only marginally less so about post-Blairite Labour) is the apparent ubiquitous cynical belief that appealing to personal greed is the only way to get anything done. Considering the almost complete lack of evidence to back up this assumption, it has gained extraordinary traction in Westminster and the City over the last 30 years. In the real world, where businesses have to compete by getting the best out of people, it has largely been abandoned as a piece of failed, ideologically driven dogma.

For the most part, we are emotional beings responding to much deeper, less tangible but more powerful emotional motivators; ask anyone in advertising. Ultimately we all want to feel good about ourselves and at work this falls broadly into three areas: feeling we are learning and getting better at stuff, feeling some control over our lives and feeling a sense of purpose. To believe that ‘carrot and stick’ management is why a nurse will care for a patient, a parole officer will struggle to support a young offender or why a programmer would write exceptional code is crass to the point of incredulity. I suspect it is even more threatening to public services and well being than cuts and austerity.

Both hope and cynicism, given enough voice, can be self-fulfilling prophecies. My plea to Cameron and his team is to have a little faith in the people they lead; we’re not as shallow, selfish or as dumb as you seem to think. Show some trust, give us some hope and we might even surprise you.

Guy Watson

Tesla is disrupting the power industry using better products not better marketing

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Tesla Powerwall

This is possibly the best example of attractive thinking applied to product innovation that I have ever seen.  It has bigger potential than any project I have contributed to.  This will be “a product that customers love”.

Elon Musk (founder of Tesla cars) launched three new products yesterday.

  • The Powerwall – a home battery linked to solar panels
  • The Powerpack – an industrial battery for commercial and factories
  • The Gigafactory – manufactures the batteries, this is an open source replicable design

Watch this video, Elon Musk explains it better than I can. Look not just at what he says but how clearly and naturally he presents. (BTW I often don’t watch videos as I find they take up too much time to say very little, but this one is worth the time)

What did I learn about creating better product from watching this?

This is not a not a new battery, this is a challenge to the whole power industry. The market opportunity for these batteries is not the size of the battery market. It is the size of the power supply industry.

Power supply companies would never have come up with this idea. It is so far away from their frame of reference and looks like a threat to their established stream of profits.

  1. A great product solves a real problem that customers have. Reducing carbon emissions is one, but the potential to remove all the unpleasant infrastructure associated with power generation and distribution is another hugely attractive feature.  For each of us there an opportunity to save money and detach ourselves from the utility company’s ever increasing charges.
  2. The top attribute of a better product is “It just works”. He uses this phrase several times. It is clear there is a lot of technology under the hood. But it seems that all that technology is about making it easy for the user.  Working overtime on the “it just works” will help us create better products
  3. Design matters, it is a part of the “It just works” The Powerwall will be an attractive feature of the home, it goes on the wall, it takes up no space.  It also looks good, unlike any battery I have ever seen before.  Design is function here.  This picture shows it located next to the car.

Tesla Powerwall

What did I learn about giving a speech from watching this?

  1. Be yourself, Elon Musk stumbles a little, but none of that matters because he is talking about something he believes in, he looks at the audience and he smiles. He has clearly rehearsed every detail, so the presentation is consistent with the product “it just works”
  2. Simple language – he uses no jargon, he use short sentences and short words.
  3. Use Graphics and photos not words in your slides. The images each reinforce a simple point that is hard to solely express in words.

So how much marketing will this product need?

I suspect it will need just two things. The first is simple.  Just create publicity to make sure we know about it. The second is harder.  Create the distribution so we can buy it.

But what this will not need is clever persuasion, or special offers, or loyalty schemes, or other marketing tricks to try to sell products that are not exactly what people need or want.

This is a stunning example of why we need better products not better marketing

This is my new standard to aspire to for creating products people love to buy.

Better products vs better persuasion?

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creating better pensions productsI have been spending some time with pensions professionals who are grappling with how to make pensions work better for the whole population. There is clearly a problem for many of us.  Many people will not have adequate provision for income in their old age.  This kind of customer problem presents an opportunity for the industry to do some better persuasion and better marketing.  But it also offers an opportunity to create better products.

I have noticed that the debate about better pensions highlights two different ways you can approach trying to solve a problem for your customers.

The first is to try and persuade people to behave differently

The focus here is how to get people to buy what you provide or sell.  This is what many business leaders are trying to do in different industries.  It is an important activity to get growth.  This seems to be the main focus in pensions.

Much of the pensions industry discussion is about getting people to take pensions more seriously. It is about getting people to save in a responsible manner.  This is manifest through the government’s auto enrolment scheme; by advocating the provision of independent advice via IFA’s; via the development of training and financial education for people.

The implication of this approach is that people are behaving irrationally.  We just need to change our ways.  We are not looking after ourselves and need educating and coercing into investing so we have a pension.  Then we need advice to take income from a pension fund in a responsible way rather than blowing it all away on holidays. Then we will have a better retirement.  This financial education and advice sounds very worthy and well intentioned.

Now I can see that much of this analysis and the need for different behaviours is true. Many people are headed for a poor retirement as a result of their inaction. But I would argue it is blinkered to concentrate only on trying to persuade people to behave differently.  Most of my experience says that trying to educate people to behave differently is very hard, it is an uphill slog with few rewards.

Alternatively, it can be much easier to create something that people actually want, that they see as solving a real problem for them.  That way they will be attracted to the solution rather than feeling badgered into it. So …

The second way is to create better products

Is the pensions problem just that people are behaving badly?  Or maybe the products on offer could be better?  Maybe the problem is not just that people are behaving stupidly, but that the products and services that are available just do not meet the real needs of ordinary people all that well and that the industry could also help people by developing better products?  It is clear from the National Association of Pension Funds’ Workplace Pensions Survey October 2013 that there is a perception amongst many ordinary people that pensions cannot provide for their future.  There is a lack of trust.

In my experience, when there is a lack of trust then educating or marketing alone will be very hard work and may not be effective.  We need better products.

What are better products?

Better productsWell “better” usually means things like

  • easy to understand – so you know what you are buying
  • easy to access – online often does this, or being in the right shops
  • deal direct with the customer, no intermediaries – intermediaries often add cost and slow things down, they need paying and do not have the same priorities as the customer (think of travel agents)
  • better value for money –
  • solves a real problem for a customer – (Tesco click and collect service)
  • does not exploit the laziness or ignorance of the customer (utilities often do exploit this)
  • takes care of the customer (First Direct)

Online solutions often deliver a lot of these elements which is why there is so much growth in online products and services.

An good example of an industry transformed by better products is to try and remember the short haul airline industry before Easyjet, Southwest Air and Ryan Air. The airline industry has been transformed by these game changers. Look at how much better it is for customers today. Easyjet and RyanAir were Game Changers.

An easy mistake to make is to think your industry is more complex and more difficult than the industries where game changers have created change and that better simpler products are not possible.

The pensions industry knows it has unique challenges and is more complex than the airline industry was. That may well be true. But the top executives of traditional national airline carriers British Airways, Lufthansa, American Airlines all thought their business was complex and did not really innovate until the low cost carriers arrived with better products.

Come to our event on 29th May

Game-Changers-2-wordsWe are running an event next week that looks at how the most successful leaders have created better products and services to deliver real real game changers in different industries. The event is called Game Changers and is on 29th May at 1400 at Campus London in Bonhill St Shoreditch (see details here)

One of our headline speakers is Mike Harris who is the original financial services game changer. Mike created First Direct and the Egg card internet banking business.  Mike will talk about what it takes to be a game changer.  Mike will share some insights on how to do this.

Another speaker is John Scriven from South Bank University, Marketing Science and the Ehrenberg Institute.  John has some surprising and ground breaking insights under the title How brands grow – what marketers don’t know?  John will share insights that are used by many of the worlds top companies on how to present better products to customers.

More information about the event is here www.gamechangers1.eventbrite.co.uk. Tickets are free.  It is just 3 hours during the afternoon.  there will be some debate around the case studies and examples.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this please add them to this article which is posted in the GameChangersUK linkedin group.  This is an online group that will continue the debate.