Why is it that so many companies are still pushing offers that don’t satisfy their customer needs or don’t bring enough incremental sales or margins? While no one would dispute importance to take onboard customer needs, why is it so hard to truly be customer centric?
We all get that to stay in the game, businesses need to evolve their offers to both existing and new customers. Neglecting customer input/needs will most certainly lead to the death of a business, sooner than later. Fighting for slim growth is recipe slow death!
But how much short term profit can you afford to trade to pursue long term growth? What if your company is just not able to hold a healthy balance of grooming current business (known marketplace, incremental offer, geographical expansion) versus bringing new ideas/offerings to market? The innovation pursue never ends and if you think you are done. Think again.
To every high performing or troubled organization we had the chance to discuss customer centricity and innovation, recurring thoughts surface. Of course each competitive landscape and companies are unique, but from our experience sometimes it’s necessary to ask some key questions:
- How do you protect your profit margins while allocating enough resources to discover & develop new offerings?
- Most people on driving seat are convinced that they are being very customer centric. How are you avoiding blocking /filtering undesired feedback to keep the status quo & aligned plans?
- How do you know what you need to know before committing to a specific strategy?
- How do you segment your current and new offerings according to your customers’ maturity?
- By what means do you define the perceived value added of the new offerings?
- How do you know you are charging the right price for the corresponding customer value?
- How are you ensuring good reach and impact through your communication channels?
If any these questions resonated with you, how do you work on your company to be able to address them? What else would you add to the list? We would love to hearing from you or exchange directly if you wish.
Authors
Kramer,T.J & Abramovich R.