Blog Category: Product Development

Why not turn your sales force into a learning force?

Business network concept. Group of businessperson. Teamwork. Human resources.

Your B2B customers have a long list of problems to be solved. But it’s not their job to carefully explain each one and deliver it gift-wrapped to your solution providers. It’s your job. When your sales professionals probe deeply and capture customer needs uniformly in your CRM, you’ll gain unprecedented market insight. And by probing well, your sales team will sell more. We call this Everyday VOC.

More in Everyday VOC white paper, www.EVOCpaper.com

Are you prioritizing customer needs?

High Priority

Most B2B companies don’t have a good system for prioritizing customer needs. At least this is what The AIM Institute found in its recent research. Of 12 voice-of-customer skills measured, this is the skill survey respondents most wanted to improve. Prioritizing customer needs was also identified as the greatest differentiator between successful and unsuccessful new product developers.

More in research report, www.b2bvocskills.com (page 11)

Innovation is the last frontier left for us to settle.

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The average company only has a 25% success rate after it finishes its front-end work. With Six Sigma success, you’ve got three defects per million attempts… while your new product development is stuck at three defects per four attempts. Can you think of any other area in your company with this level of waste? Don’t let your competitors tame this frontier first.

More in white paper, www.catchtheinnovationwave.com (page 3)

Your innovation needs two types of metrics: “New Product Success” and “Learning Success.”

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New Product Success is a metric for current projects. Learning Success—which measures skill-building progress—is a metric for future projects. Most companies just consider New Product Success. Worse, they only look at ultimate metrics, e.g., sales. If they also used intermediate metrics, they’d have enough time to apply what they learned from these metrics.

More in white paper, www.newinnovationmetrics.com

When analytical and discovery thinking compete in NPD processes, expect the former to dominate.

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Analysis looks for what has been done wrong; discovery for what could be done right. Failing to discover opportunities is a costly error. Paradoxically, it is most often forgiven. In fact, if your team fails to develop a blockbuster because it missed a critical customer need, no one will even notice. At least not until a competitor does a better job. This is called an error of omission and it’s a serious problem for many B2B companies.

More in 2-minute video at 25. Let your customers surprise you

Fixate on the only source of unlimited potential, not sources of diminishing return.

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Unlike innovation, quality and productivity apply to current operations and yield diminishing returns. What do you do after you reach zero defects… or your factory is being run by the proverbial “man and a dog”? (The man feeds the dog; the dog bites the man if he touches the controls.) Customer-facing innovation is different. There is no limit. Just look at Apple Computer.

More in white paper, www.catchtheinnovationwave.com (page 2)