Why should you know your customer and business
environment better than competition?
It's 8 AM, do you know who
your customer is?
Most
manufacturers think they do but research after research study concludes
they don't.
It would be a wise
investment of your time, if you could find out from your customers who
are the primary, secondary decision makers for your products.
Once you know who
they are, your objective should be to keep them happy so they would buy
your product and not that of competition.
Can you quantify your customer's unmet user
needs?
Every effective
manufacturer and marketer should know firsthand and be able to rank the
unmet needs of their customers.
Most often, you
might get such a list from your marketing or sales departments. However,
our experience has shown that it is either incomplete or outdated. In
today's ever fast changing environment and globalization of the
marketplace, business should seek to clearly understand and exceed
customer expectations.
Which one of the unmet user needs should you
satisfy first, and why?
If
you really know your customer better than your competition, then you
should know not only what you must do first but also what benefits your
company will gain before you start a project.
The strategy of
achieving desired financial objectives by converting unmet customer needs
into new or improved products is extremely important. If the work is done
correctly, the probability of reaching your specific goals increases many
fold. The described rationale appears to be obvious, yet time and time
again we have found companies that had realized only negligible benefits
from expending significant resources. Evidently, they satisfied a minor
instead of a primary unmet user need.
The Pareto
principle, "the vital few and trivial many", should be applied
here: satisfy 80% of your unmet user needs by expending only 20% of
effort and go on to your next project.
We at
TechnoBusiness Solutions have devised and applied successfully such a
powerful method to a number of product projects.
How does your product stack up against the
competition?
Evaluation
of your products and competitive ones should be an on-going activity if
your company seeks competitive superiority.
Product evaluation
should include testing of both functional properties and elements of the
4Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion). Keep in mind that while you
inspect a very small sample of your manufactured product, your customer
inspects 100% of it!
Learn to
effectively utilize the feedback from your sales, marketing and customer
service departments. Make sure your complaint form is simple, short but
concise. It will provide you with less but far more accurate information
than a detailed one. Its completion should not take more than five
minutes.
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