The #1 mandate for every business leader should be, “leave your business stronger than you found it.” Business Builders don’t cross a finish line by retiring. They pass a baton. Many businesses can accelerate their organic growth by simply stopping six harmful leadership practices, outlined in my book, Business Builders: How to Become an Admired and Trusted Corporate Leader.
Learn about the book, Business Builders
If you’re mainly concerned with making the place look good quarter after quarter, you’re a Decorator. Jeff Bezos was a Builder… running Amazon for seven years before turning a profit. The stock market still applauded him, because he had a building plan they could believe in. As Warren Buffet said, “Companies obtain the shareholder constituency that they seek and deserve.”
Learn about the book, Business Builders
It can be a challenge to recruit customers for VOC. The reasons for customer reluctance to interviews are murky. Perhaps heavier workloads, interview fatigue, tighter corporate policies or skepticism created by research requests that become sales calls. Regardless of the cause, these four strategies can help: Reduce the Number of Customers to Recruit for VOC ... Read More
In Level 1, you start with your ideas and launch products you think customers will want. In Level 2, you still start with your ideas, but “validate” them with customers. In Level 3, you start with customer needs, using divergent and convergent interviews. You uncover a full range of outcomes and only work on those customers care about.
Watch 2-min video, Immerse Your Team in Customer Outcomes
The first is inherited growth from products launched long ago, which now “carry” your business. The second is market growth… the tide that lifts all boats. You can only impact the third—earned growth—by doing a better job than every competitor in understanding and meeting the needs of a market. This means it’s easy to be lulled into thinking your underlying growth is greater than it is.
Watch 2-min video, How Much Growth Did You Earn?
Guided AI is democratizing secondary market research, making it accessible to engineers, scientists and other B2B professionals. It will completely change who does the research, why they do it, and how often. Early adopters will penetrate adjacent markets and develop new products faster and better. Let’s see how. In the pre-AI age, most B2B secondary ... Read More
You can miss an important customer need… pursue the wrong need… over-design and add unneeded costs… measure customer success the wrong way… overlook a competing alternative… over-estimate what customers will pay… under-value your product… use improper messaging. So many chances to err. Fortunately, B2B producers can use a “science” to avoid all of these. And this science delivers a truly outsized return on investment.
Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth
Do you know a business leader that doesn’t want to accelerate growth? Me neither. Sadly, they’re missing a hidden brake pedal silently working against them. This same pedal causes salespeople to miss quotas this year… and R&D to launch mediocre products in future years. Let’s remove that pedal. (Watch in 3-minute video.) What is this ... Read More
You develop your customer’s new product. It’s like this: “Mr. Customer, we’ve assembled a team aimed at developing something you’ll love. As you can see, we even brought a top R&D expert with us to listen to you. So can you tell us everything you think we should know before we go into our labs? We want to get this right so the innovation makes you a hero at work.” THIS is the approach that drives unprecedented organic growth for you.
Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth
This can super-charge your organic growth: Don’t let your R&D conduct any product development work without unbiased, unfiltered data on what customers do and do not want. Market Satisfaction Gaps—based on importance and satisfaction scores for customer outcomes—provide this. You’ll free up enormous resources by working on only what matters.
More in white paper, Market Satisfaction Gaps
What else is there besides hearing customers’ needs? Impress them so they’ll want to do business with you. Incorporate your insights into a value calculator to optimize pricing. Use customers’ precise interview language on your website to improve SEO. Uncover unspoken needs in a post-interview customer tour. Understand their next best alternative. These are the reasons VOC training delivers ridiculously high ROI.
Watch 2-min video, How Blueprinting Drives Organic Growth
When you say you want to pursue a “new market,” do you mean the market is truly embryonic? Or is this just a new market for you? If so, it’s better to call the latter an “unfamiliar market.” The customers were already there. It’s you—not the market—that’s new. This is just one example of supplier-centric thinking that permeates B2B innovation. Customer-centric thinking will take you much further.
More in white paper, Innovating in Unfamiliar Markets (page 2)
It’s helpful—but shortsighted—to ask, “How can AI assist me?” It ignores the end game when AI becomes more than your friendly helper. Some ask, “When will AI replace me?” A better question is, “What work can I master that AI cannot?” For this, we’ll consider the Digital Waterline. (Watch in 5-minute video.) AI already does many ... Read More
Technology development is science-facing and converts money into knowledge. Product development is market-facing and converts knowledge back into money. Both are critical, but don’t confuse them. And never do any product development until you have quantified, unbiased, unfiltered data on customer needs.
More in white paper, Commercialize technology in six foolproof steps