Video Series: Leader’s Guide to B2B Organic Growth
You want to outpace competitors in terms of rapid, profitable, sustainable growth, right? This will not happen unless your leadership team thinks differently than those competitors. We sometimes assume our leaders have it all figured out, but they are over-worked, stretched in many directions, and under intense short-term pressure. Here’s the only short course of its kind (30 videos about 2 minutes each) designed to take your B2B leadership team to a new level of growth-focused thinking.
Video Episode #01
Recognize your growth challenge
Do you plan to grow faster than the markets you serve? Well so do your competitors. How will you win while they lose? Smarter R&D… more persuasive marketing… harder working sales? Can you think of even one unassailable competitive advantage? This series explores the answer for B2B companies today.
More in research paper, What Drives B2B Organic Growth
Video Episode #02
Become a builder
There are 4 types of leaders: Builders, Remodelers, Decorators, and Realtors. This matrix helps you understand which you are. Your business needs a builder. That’s because there are 3 three types of growth—inherited, market, and earned… and you only control one. (Hint… it’s not the first two.)
More in article, Are You a Builder or a Decorator?
Video Episode #03
Catch the innovation wave
In the last century, Detroit automakers fell behind Japanese competitors in the Quality Wave. Later, we saw winners and losers in the Productivity Wave. We’re now in the Innovation Wave, with huge consequences. Some B2B companies will win by moving innovation from “hope” into a new science.
More in white paper, Catch the Innovation Wave
Video Episode #04
Avoid the commodity death spiral
Is your business descending the 9 steps of the commodity death spiral right now? Do you see yourself in a specialty vs. commodity tug-of-war? Five commodity-pulling forces are arrayed against you. Specialty-pulling forces must come from one place—you, the supplier—or they won’t come at all.
More in article, The Commodity Death Spiral
Video Episode #05
Rethink your true north goal
If your business goal is to “maximize shareholder wealth,” you should change it. See why this lovely-result-but-lousy-goal works against your growth ambitions. Understand the 3 rules exceptional companies follow. Make it your goal to “understand and meet customer needs better than others.”
More in article, Why Maximizing Shareholder Value Is a Flawed Goal
Video Episode #06
Re-prioritize your initiatives
What initiatives is your business pursuing today? Lean… sales effectiveness… acquisitions… cost reductions? If your over-arching aim is rapid, profitable, sustainable growth—and it should be—see why these otherwise-fine initiatives may be distracting you and inhibiting the high-quality growth you seek.
More in article, Plan your B2B organic growth with this new diagnostic
Video Episode #07
Recalibrate your time horizon
New research shows huge financial benefits realized by companies exhibiting long-term behavior. And yet, short-termism often prevails. Here’s the reality: your financial results today are just the future someone else created years ago. Isn’t it time to make your career a participant—not spectator—sport?
More in article, What’s Restraining Your Growth? Your Time Horizon
Video Episode #08
Know what really drives growth
This original research by The AIM Institute investigates 24 possible growth drivers… and the views of over 10,000 years of professional B2B experience on their growth impact. Bottom line: Most companies want to put more emphasis on understanding customer needs in the front end of innovation.
More in research paper, What Drives B2B Organic Growth?
Video Episode #09
Build your growth capabilities
Any champion—a golfer, chess master, or rock climber—focuses on building their capabilities. Yet, many business leaders obsess with “results,” hit the reset button at year-end, and start all over again.
Use this free diagnostic to benchmark your growth capabilities, and chart a multi-year improvement plan.
Video Episode #10
Understand your B2B advantages
Most B2B companies have enormous insight advantages, because their customers have high knowledge, interest, objectivity, foresight and concentration.
Check out this free service to score your market’s B2B Index. You’ll see “how B2B” your market is… and learn how to take advantage of your B2B advantage.
Video Episode #11
Concentrate on winning markets
A market segment is a “cluster of customers with similar needs.” Most B2B companies fail to focus their resources on those segments that are winnable and worth winning. They don’t follow the #1 lesson of war: “concentration of force against weakness.” Instead, they spread their forces too timidly and evenly.
More in article, How’s Your Market Segmentation?
Video Episode #12
Stop leading with your solutions
Most B2B companies don’t test market needs until they launch their products… to see if anyone buys them. Imagine using a medieval catapult aimed at customers: “You’ll love this next one.” Future companies will laugh at how we failed to understand B2B customer needs in the front end of innovation.
More in article, Why will future companies laugh at us?
Video Episode #13
Immerse in customer outcomes
The key to successful B2B innovation and organic growth is understanding customer needs—their desired end results—better than competitors. There’s a science to this, with nine steps. It’s like turning up the magnification of your microscope on outcomes at ever-increasing levels. You should try it.
More in white paper, Timing is Everything: Exposing Deep Flaws in B2B Innovation Today
Video Episode #14
Eliminate most commercial risk
Consider 3 phases of product development: front-end, development, and launch. You resolve technical risk in the development stage. Most companies resolve commercial risk during the launch stage. Big mistake. Nearly everything needed to resolve commercial B2B risk is knowable in the front-end.
More in white paper, Timing is Everything: Exposing Deep Flaws in B2B Innovation Today
Video Episode #15
Let customers surprise you
You don’t want to be surprised in most of business… overseeing production, traveling for business, building a facility. The one exception? You do want to be surprised when innovating. This is true in the lab, but also during customer interviews. See a totally different VOC method that boosts surprises.
More in research report, Discovery Interview Research Report
Video Episode #16
Avoid errors of commission
Successful new product development is all about avoiding errors of omission and commission. The first error is failing to uncover unarticulated customer needs, and the second is pursuing the wrong needs. To win, use divergent and convergent customer interviews… and rely on your Market Satisfaction Gaps.
More in research report, Preference Interview Research Report
Video Episode #17
Engage your B2B customers
B2C suppliers use customer interviews to gain insight. B2B suppliers should do this AND to build customer engagement. If your B2B market has a handful of large buyers, use your interviews to impress them as the supplier they should do business with. Three practical ways to do this are explored here.
More in ebook, Reinventing VOC for B2B
Video Episode #18
Create and capture value
Is your pricing supplier-focused, competitor-focused, or customer-focused? If you don’t want to leave money on the table with your new innovation, it must be customer-focused. Unless you regularly employ value calculators for this today, you can be sure your prices are not being optimized.
More in article, Getting Top Price for Your New Product
Video Episode #19
Insist on data driven innovation
Be very nervous about “confirmation bias.” Most B2B companies have NPD processes designed to let this bias run rampant. See The AIM Institute’s research on how quantitative interviews and Market Satisfaction Gaps remove this bias… and help you reduce commercial risk in the front-end of innovation.
More in research report, Preference Interview Research Report
Video Episode #20
Pursue fast innovation
You’ll gain $4000 in net present value for every day you launch a typical B2B product earlier. Consider 3 ways to speed innovation: 1. Strengthen front-end work to end hesitation, second-guessing, and dead-end detours. 2. Concentrate resources on fewer projects. 3. Reduce “organizational friction.”
More in article, How Leaders Can Accelerate New-Product Innovation
Video Episode #21
Launch your products explosively
Most B2B companies are far too “relaxed” about their product launches. Here’s a good roadmap: The Right Product delivered to the Right Market using the Right Message through the Right Media. This especially helps you make market-specific choices from 9 traditional and 9 online promotional media.
More in ebook, 12 New Rules of B2B Product Launch
Video Episode #22
Invigorate your NPD process
A stage-and-gate process is helpful in managing the interface between your company and project teams. But by itself it leads to internal focus and a checklist mentality. Build another interface on top… between these teams and the customers they hope to satisfy. This interface is called customer insight skills.
More in article, Should Your Stage-Gate® Get a No-Go?
Video Episode #23
Treat “R” and “D” differently
Treat technology development and product development differently. The former is science-facing and turns money into knowledge. The latter is market-facing and turns knowledge back into money. This “separation thinking” applies to voice-of-customer: You should “test silently” any technology you have.
More in article, Should you develop new products like Steve Jobs?
Video Episode #24
Understand risk vs uncertainty
Don’t let the Ansoff matrix cause you to fear unfamiliar markets and technologies. Start by treating “risk” and “uncertainty” as different beasts. You’ll be bolder and more successful in driving from uncertainty to certainty when you plan with the FAQS map (Facts, Assumptions, Questions, Surprises).
More in article, Innovating in Unfamiliar Markets: How to De-risk Transformational Projects
Video Episode #25
Pursue transformational projects
Successful companies reap huge financial reward from bold, transformation projects. They probably approach them differently than you do today. Consider this 5-step process to safely and rationally process all the potential “landmines” that could otherwise blow up budgets, schedules, and reputations.
Learn more about project de-risking.
Video Episode #26
Study your industry’s future
Ignoring your future is a bad idea for 3 reasons. First, foresight wins battles… so compete for industry foresight, capability-building and then market share. Second, see why the future is more knowable than most realize. Third, you want to be the disruptor, not disruptee. Consider Amazon, Uber, and Apple.
Get your set of Future Scenes Trend Sheets now.
Video Episode #27
Create a “learning force”
A sales force is fine, but why not add a “learning force”? You don’t have this today if you’re hiring, training and rewarding your sales force to sell for today, not learn for tomorrow. But you could turn them into an “early warning system” that allows you to pursue market innovation at just the right time.
More in white paper, Timing is Everything: Exposing Deep Flaws in B2B Innovation Today
Video Episode #28
Beware of B2C “shortcuts”
You’ll continue seeing innovations for how we innovate… but you should critically assess them with a “B2B filter.” Take Lean Startup. It offers some good ideas, but it can encourage you to develop and show prototypes to B2B customers before having an intelligent conversation with them. Now that’s just silly.
More in white paper, Lean Startup: Expanding the Build-Measure-Learn Cycle
Video Episode #29
Employ leading growth metrics
The vitality index—percent of sales from new products—is a metric you should keep using. But it’s not predictive, prescriptive or precise. Consider 2 leading-indicator metrics from The AIM Institute: The Commercial Confidence Index (CCI), and the Growth Driver Index (GDI)… both quite easy to run.
Use this free diagnostic to find out your CCI and GDI, and benchmark your growth capabilities.
Video Episode #30
Lead for growth… every day
Do you admire business leaders like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos? Why… because they were great at financial reviews or quarterly investor calls? Great leaders march to a different beat, and so must you. Consider these practical leadership tips to build your own legacy as a great business leader.
Benchmark your growth capabilities, and chart a multi-year improvement plan with our free B2B Growth Diagnostic.