A recent inc.com article, which challenged businesses to determine if their offering is a vitamin or a painkiller, caught my attention. In short:
- Your product is a vitamin if your product creates a stronger future state over time, and
- Your product is a pain killer if your product solves a specific hurt.
The author, Chris Heivly, asserts that as leaders, we must know what our offerings solve. I agree – but answering the question isn’t as easy as it sounds. Here are three steps to ensure your answer is correct.
Step #1. Ask (learn from, observe, understand) your customers.
I believe strongly in the adage “what you solve is more important than what you sell.” To determine if you are a vitamin or a pain killer, you must know what the customer is asking of you. How will your customers’ lives be different or better because of your product?
Work to capture your customers’ point of view. Sharpen your customer insights surveys. Observe customers. Learn from the likes of Steve Jobs and perceive what customers need without hearing them say it. Research what is said about your company on social media. Look at your performance at the critical tipping points in your customer experience. Listen to your front-line staff.
The trick here is to get enough input so that you (and your leadership team) trust the results – even if they surprise you.
Step #2. Choose one.
“Both” may sound like an ideal answer. Saying “both” may seem like it gives you a larger target market and a bigger job to do, but a lack of focus will rob you of success. A COO I worked with had a persistent saying: “We can do anything, but we can’t do everything.”
So force yourself to be specific. It will help to better align your product with your customer’s needs. And consider this: According to Matthew Dixon, Managing Director, Corporate Executive Board, and author, The Challenger Sale, 60% of a company’s explorations result in no decision because someone didn’t make a strong enough case to make change. Focus is your friend, friend.
Step #3. Test your thinking.
Now, determine the difference between your perception and your reality. Ideally, the leadership team has agreed on a point of view. Now, gauge where your organization is at as a whole.
One fun way to test your thinking is to create a word cloud, a pictorial display of words. Create one word cloud based on customer input and a second from an employee survey. Now you can clearly see where the differences are. Do you see a vitamin or a pain killer?
Do this periodically and track the results. If you’re seeing increasing clarity in your focus, you’re on the right track.
Linda – some good points here – but there’s one idea I don’t fully agree with: “60% of a company's explorations result in no decision because someone didn't make a strong enough case to make change.” Yeah – kind of. But that assumes that there is a strong enough case – something that doesn’t always happen. Unfortunately, many marketers and salespeople get so caught up in what their product solves, that they lose sight of the fact that financial decision makers look at things through a different lens.
As I quoted a former accounting professor of mine in an earlier blog, “ROI Hype: Finance for Fools?”, “Whether a business decision involves IT, Marketing, or Operations, Kemp believes that a key question to answer is "what is the value to the total organization if I approve a given initiative, versus what is the value if I do nothing? That requires comparing marginal benefit to marginal cost.”
Sometimes, “the numbers” just aren’t there.