Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta clientes-alvo. Mostrar todas as mensagens
Mostrar mensagens com a etiqueta clientes-alvo. Mostrar todas as mensagens

terça-feira, setembro 19, 2023

Para reflexão

"In business, the prevailing view is that doing more things is a clear sign of confidence. The notion is that it is really bold to say that not only can we do what we are currently doing; we are so confident that we can do other things too. Only if we lacked confidence would we stick to the thing we are currently doing! While I wouldn’t go far as to argue that this is never a valid sentiment, in my experience, doing more things is almost always a sign of lack of confidence.
...
What does a confident company look like? It is one that does less because it has confidence in what it is doing.
...
Or take Apple. It sells high-end smartphones featuring the closed iOS operating system. That isn’t much. It is pretty narrow. Depending on the quarter, it means Apple only sells 15% of the world’s smartphones. Android phones make up almost all the remaining 85%. Wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to produce phones at the price point at which the majority of smartphones are sold, or even Android phones too to give it a bigger share of the market and better growth prospects? No, not really. With the one thing that it does, Apple earns about an 80% share of the industry’s gross profit. It has the confidence to do a little and prosper a lot."

Trechos retirados de mais uma boa reflexão de Roger Martin em "Confident Companies Do Less

terça-feira, agosto 01, 2023

Num cenário polarizado ...

Há muitos anos que aqui no blogue, praticamente desde a primeira hora, escrevo sobre a importância de seleccionar os clientes-alvo e trabalhar para eles. Por exemplo, em 2006 escrevia sobre o perigo de ser uma Arca de Noé:

A reforçar esta mensagem de focalização nos clientes-alvo, tenho desenvolvido aqui também a metáfora de Mongo, um mundo pleno de variedade e de tribos numa paisagem enrugada:

Às vezes criticam-me porque supostamente no mundo actual as empresas tanto podem servir em simultâneo gregos como troianos. No entanto, continuo na minha, ainda na semana passada li, "Why Mushroom Leather (and Other New Materials) Are Struggling to Scale":

"Compare the number of venture capital firms funding software to the number of venture firms specialising in material innovation or fashion. There are far fewer.

The reasons for the chasm are structural. Once a software solution is invented, the marginal cost to distribute the second, third and one millionth sale are close to zero. By contrast, once a new material is invented, the marginal costs for subsequent units are nearly the same. It is only with learning and scale that costs begin to decrease.

At the same time, building the capacity to produce new materials often requires considerable capital expenditure to build out infrastructure."

Entretanto, ontem li "The Myth of the Mainstream":

"Chasing the mass market is a losing proposition for marketers in a polarized culture. Allying with the subculture that loves you is the best way to drive brand success.

...

For years, McDonald's seemed to embody everything that was wrong with the American diet. The brand had become a symbol of food choices that were driving escalating rates of obesity and hypertension.

The company spent more than a decade trying to fight this perception among American consumers by targeting them with messaging about its updated menu, which offered healthier alternatives more in line with contemporary diet trends - but to no avail. Year over year, McDonald's sales declined, and its brand perception continued to spiral downward.

...

Finally, the company decided to go on the offensive. Instead of combating the opposition's hate and attempting to win over those in the middle, McDonald's decided to focus on its fans - the people who self-identify as McDonald's devotees despite the vitriol directed at the brand. 

...

In doing so, it tapped into what these devotees love about McDonald's and not only activated their collective consumption but also inspired them to spread the word on behalf of the brand. The result of this strategy was a 10.4% increase in global revenue for McDonald's from 2018 to 2021 and the return of dormant customers: more than a quarter of those who came in to buy the Travis Scott meal, for example, hadn't visited the chain in over a year. Seemingly overnight, McDonald's went from being a cautionary tale to the darling of brand marketing and a case study for advertising effectiveness.

If you want to get people to move, you must choose a side. The notion that you can win by playing to the middle is a misleading myth.

What's going on here? Conventional wisdom would tell us that in a world of increasingly polarized opinions, our best bet is to appease the middle, if only because that's where the majority of the market is. That also seems like a safe bet to many companies, as a middle-of-the-road position is less likely to alienate potential customers.

...

The middle doesn't adopt new products with any urgency. They are not the first to respond to marketing communications, nor are they likely to weigh in on a debate between advocates and detractors. They mitigate their own risk of moving out of step with what might be considered generally acceptable by stepping back and observing other people's responses first.

The red herring is that we perceive this indifference as an opportunity to persuade them to one side or the other. But the truth is, they are not typically convinced by any marketing communications. Instead, they, too, take cues from other people - sometimes those who are for you, and at other times those who are against you.

Our chances of successfully influencing behavior increases when we choose to address the people who are most likely to take action.

With this in mind, it becomes abundantly clear that in a polarized scenario, the chances of marketers getting people to move are far greater when we activate the collective of the willing as opposed to trying to convince detractors or even persuade the indifferent."

Sobre a polarização do mercado, recordo Polarização do mercado ou como David e Golias podem co-existir

terça-feira, julho 18, 2023

Investir para entrar na mente dos clientes-alvo

"Each area within the circles is strategically important, but A, B, and C are critical to building competitive advantage. The team should ask questions about each. For A: How big and sustainable are our advantages? Are they based on distinctive capabilities? For B: Are we delivering effectively in the area of parity? For C: How can we counter our competitors’ advantages?

The team should form hypotheses about the company’s competitive advantages and test them by asking customers. The process can yield surprising insights, such as how much opportunity for growth exists in the white space (E). Another insight might be what value the company or its competitors create that customers don’t need (D, F, or G).
...
But the biggest surprise is often that area A, envisioned as huge by the company, turns out to be minuscule in the eyes of the customer."

Acredito que muitas empresas apostam em propostas de valor que caem sobretudo na área B porque se focam nos outputs e não nos inputs. Assim, não investem tempo para entrar na mente dos clientes-alvo e perceber como é que o output é usado como input no processo de criação de valor do cliente.

Trechos retirados de "Strategic Insight in Three Circles".  

sexta-feira, julho 14, 2023

Trabalhar a relação

Um artigo com ideias interessantes e que ajuda a trabalhar o tema do desenvolvimento da relação com os clientes. 

"Many companies have embraced the importance of creating closer, more valuable relationships with customers.

But most do little to actively manage their portfolios of weaker and stronger relationships, other than keeping them diversified. They're missing significant opportunities.

...

  • How central is developing customer relationship strength to our strategy and competitive advantage? More specifically, when and how much should we invest in converting weaker relationships to stronger relationships?
  • How do we leverage these investments once relationships are created?
  • How do we protect the relationships we have created to minimize customer churn?
...

we have identified three explicit goals for an effective CPM [customer portfolio management] growth strategy: relationship conversion, relationship leverage, and relationship defense.

Relationship Conversion 
Customer relationship conversion is the process of turning strangers into acquaintances, acquaintances into friends, and friends into partners. It accomplishes two important goals. First, customer loyalty and profit per customer improve, thanks to an increase in strong relationships. And second, the addition of weaker relationships to a portfolio provides both a source of future loyal customers and economies of scale."
Trechos retirados de "Manage Your Customer Portfolio for Maximum Lifetime Value"

sexta-feira, junho 16, 2023

Os extremistas

No último livro de Seth Godin, "The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams" encontrei um texto sobre um tema que me é muito caro: 

"49. Focusing on the Extreme User
Every organization has extremists: the employees, customers, or investors who demand more, pay more, use more, talk more, and share more. These extreme users have great needs and offer greater benefits. They are the heavy users, people with disabilities, the sneezers, and the professionals. They're the committed. The Stanford d.school has argued that focusing on these users teaches the organization lessons that will work for all users. This is contrary to the typical industrial organization, which is happy to lose the extremists if it helps them serve the masses more easily. Find the nerds, the motivated, and the overlooked, and figure out what they need to thrive. That exploration will reveal what others have needed as well but didn't care enough to speak up about."

Isto alinha bem com um texto que encontrei na net recentemente:



quinta-feira, fevereiro 09, 2023

Mudar o cliente


Esta frase fixou a minha atenção.

O valor não é gerado pelo produtor, ponto.

O valor é criado pelo cliente ao usar o produto na sua vida e ao experimentar um conjunto de consequências. 

Isto está relacionado com a frase "We might know what we are seling, but do we know what the cstomer is buying?"

O produtor pode escolher outro tipo de clientes, ou pode co-criar valor com os clientes actuais ajudando-os a perceber, a apreciar, a aspirar a algo mais. Que clientes têm potencial para fazer esta transição? Que parceiros podem ajudar a desenvolver esta jornada? Que mudanças organizacionais têm de ser feitas para trabalhar este aspecto?

quinta-feira, fevereiro 02, 2023

Para reflexão

Acerca de "Don't know, don't care":

"Clients and customers can be frustrating.

Perhaps they don’t know what you know.

Perhaps they don’t care.

It’s possible to educate and inspire.

It might be more productive to find the few that want to go where you do."

Julgo que falta acrescentar algo como "Perhaps you don't care. Perhaps you are too focused in your output, and less focused in the outcome"

Sempre o foco nos clientes-alvo. Ou, como li recentemente, "We might know what we are selling, but do we know what the customer is buying?": 

"Another related issue is the manner in which the offering is supposed to create value for the customer. The traditional perspective is simply to consider the offering so as to contain the value that it brings to the customer. The service literature has however suggested that sellers need to consider that the customer's actual use of the offering is a deciding factor in what comes out of the offering [Moi ici: O outcome]. This perspective suggests that the offering should be seen as co-created by the seller and the customer, implying that value cannot be predetermined by the seller but also depends on the customer. This makes it much more difficult for the seller to design and control value creation. One way of doing this is to involve the customer in the seller's processes of designing and providing the offering, whether it is a component or a solution."


 

segunda-feira, janeiro 30, 2023

Quão diferentes são os seus clientes?

O meu interesse no livro começou há dias, Quem são os melhores e os piores clientes?, literalmente.

"Specifically, the Lens 1 views encourage us to "celebrate heterogeneity," in other words, to see and acknowledge the existence of the small but powerful set of customers who buy more frequently, at greater average order values, and at (slightly) higher margins than the vast majority of the customer base. Companies that ignore these differences across their customers do so at great risk. Alternatively, those that are able to recognize and act on these differences are sowing the seeds for an effective and sustainable growth strategy.
We have mentioned it several times now, but we cannot say it enough: There is no average customer.  ...  These sources of variation can be anticipated and leveraged effectively, rather than naively treating every customer the same, or by overcomplicating the customer relationship management task by going too far with well-intended but hard to implement "1:1 marketing" tactics.
...
  • We are used to seeing averages, but they can be misleading. It is important that we understand the true nature of the variation in customer behavior, and this comes from looking at distributions.
  • We are used to seeing totals, but we gain insight by decomposing these totals into their constituent parts, be it an additive or multiplicative decomposition.
  • We are used to making statements about the nature of behavior across our entire customer base, that is, making the implicit assumption that the "drivers" of behavior are the same for everyone. But the decile analyses (whether doing so on the basis of equal-sized groups of customers or equal-sized portions of customer profitability) show that this is not at all true. It is vitally important to understand how and why the top-decile customers are different from the lower ones."

A Lente #1 pergunta "Quão diferentes são os seus clientes?":

  • como se distribui a facturação por cada cliente?
  • como se distribui o número de transacções por cliente?
  • transformar facturação em número de transacções vezes a facturação média por transacção
  • como se distribui a facturação média por transacção?
  • como se distribui o lucro por cliente?
  • como se distribui a margem média por cliente?
É interessante e olhar para uma empresa e perceber que o top 1% dos clientes pode ser tão lucrativo quanto os 41% do outro extremo. É interessante perceber que metade dos lucros de uma empresa podem vir de apenas 15% dos seus clientes.

E na sua empresa, quão diferentes são os seus clientes?

Trechos retirados de "The Customer-Base Audit" de Peter Fader, Bruce Hardie e Michael Ross. 

segunda-feira, janeiro 16, 2023

Outra vez a diferença entre evento e jornada (processo)

"Anybody can open a beauty salon. Any company can sell groceries. Any entrepreneur can invent a cool new technology. And any firm can purchase a fancy CRM system to collect mountains of data about their customers. But that’s not enough.
...

CRM alone does not make a company customer centric. It is not the solution to every customer-centric challenge. It is merely the first step-albeit a massively important step-toward customer-centric success. Companies that do CRM correctly don’t just collect data about their customers. ... they also know how to use that data to serve those customers better. They align their marketing and sales strategies based on that data. They strive to reinforce relationships with their customers based on that data."

Isto acontece tanto, compra-se a tecnologia, mas não se a usa, não se investe na formação de quem a terá de usar. Acredita-se que o acto de a comprar é que merece a atenção. Outra vez a diferença entre evento e jornada (processo). O mesmo se pode dizer da certificação, sem a trabalhar no dia a dia, apenas algo que se subcontrata a um consultor, se ele puder fazer tudo, então é que é bom!


Trechos de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage" de Peter Fader

quinta-feira, janeiro 12, 2023

Trabalhar com os clientes que não são os clientes-alvo

Uma reflexão interessante de Peter Fader que vai ao encontro do que me sinto obrigado a fazer na prática, apesar do que escrevo aqui ao longo dos anos:

"the basics of customer centricity are to identify, research, serve, and profit from the most valuable customers your company has-what we call the "right" customers. It is a simple idea that, admittedly, is not so simple to implement. And that's because the adoption of customer centricity demands nothing less than a complete restructuring of your organization that will position it to serve precisely the right customers at the expense of pretty much everything else.

...

When I teach customer centricity, it doesn’t take long for my students to begin asking that very question or some version of it. “If we are to concern ourselves only with the right customers,” they ask, “what exactly are we supposed to do with the rest of the customers? Should be ignore them? Push them away? Fire them?

The answer to all of those questions, of course, is no. Because even though I’ve spent nearly 10,000 words telling you all of the reasons why the product-centric model is old and dangerously vulnerable to a changing global marketplace, I will now admit that even if you create the most thoroughly customer-centric company that has ever existed, you will still need to be product-centric in a significant way.

...

Yes, you want those other customers to stick around. You want them to buy your products and services. You want them to provide the steady influx of cash that will allow you to continue your work toward capitalizing on the right customers. You want these other customers to keep right on being your customers; you just don’t want to burn any calories worrying about them. What I’m suggesting here is that you should view these other customers as low-hanging fruit. They are easy money. They are, in essence, the ballast that will allow you to continue on your path to long-term customer-centric success. In that sense, they remain every bit as important to your company as the right customers.And while those right customers get your best efforts, the others don’t. And no, there’s nothing wrong with that. From a strictly business perspective, in fact, it’s the right way to do things. I always stress to my students that the decision to become a customer-centric company is most certainly not a decision to become a boutique company. We in the customer-centric world are not downsizers. We don’t want to shrink our customer pool or limit profits. Rather, we are simply interested in allocating our resources in the most efficient way possible. Again, let us remember the point on which we began this chapter: the goal of a customer-centric firm is precisely the same goal of a product-centric firm. The goal is to make money-lots of money-for the long term. To generate enormous profits. To grow. To create shareholder value.

...

We want those other customers to keep coming back, so long as they don't cause any trouble, don't waste our time, and don't cost us a single cent more than it takes for us to keep them coming back. We customer-centric types acknowledge that we are better off spending our time worrying about the right customers, not whether one of the other customers stays or goes. That is why customer centricity is different than product centricity."

O problema é que muitas vezes as empresas gastam demasiados recursos com clientes que não são os clientes-alvo. [Moi ici: Ás vezes acontece-me isto, mais vezes do que gostava. Embora na prestação de serviço seja diferente. Por vezes, funciona como um investimento no desenvolvimento de algo que depois pode ser trabalhado e adaptado aos clientes-alvo] O problema é que muitas empresas, demasiadas, perdem dinheiro, literalmente, com clientes que não são os clientes-alvo. 

Trechos retirados de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage (Wharton Executive Essentials)" de Peter Fader. 

quarta-feira, janeiro 11, 2023

Recordar que os clientes não são todos iguais.

Via @AMISCZ no twitter:

Recordar que os clientes não são todos iguais.

Recordar Cuidado com esta gente à frente de empresas e sobretudo o lado negativo de:


 Eu não frequentaria esta linha de caixa, ainda, mas a maioria da população consumidora com poder de compra está cada vez mais na faixa acima da idade da reforma. Por isso, faz sentido fazer este tipo de experiências se os clientes-alvo estiverem neste grupo.

segunda-feira, janeiro 09, 2023

"your right customers"

"The customer” does not exist because every customer is different. Customer-centric firms acknowledge the heterogeneity among our customers. More than that, we celebrate it because we understand that heterogeneity offers us opportunity. In a customer-centric company, we understand that some customers do matter more. We understand that some customers do deserve more-and by extension, some customers deserve less. We understand that it's okay to give them less. I really believe that. I believe it very deeply, in fact. But I also understand this idea is pretty far out there-and I understand the enormous challenge associated with its real-world implementation.

It's a challenge that organizations must tackle on both the organizational and financial fronts.

The idea that some customers matter more than others is a radical one. But so is the idea that your company should completely retool its research and development functions, rework its metrics, and generally rethink every aspect of its daily operations specifically to meet the demands of those right customers - and in the process acknowledge that your old way of doing things was, for lack of a better term, misguided. So many companies are so good at the product-centric basics-inventing a thing, producing a thing, delivering a thing, inventing a new thing, and so on-that they don’t stop to ask themselves, even for a moment, whether the customers they are selling to are the right ones.

...

Once you have identified your right customers the next steps are obvious. You mine those customers for information. You find out what they want, what they need, and what they will demand going forward. You find out how to acquire new customers who share some of the key characteristics that distinguish your best customers. And then you position your company, from the very top of the corporate structure right down to the on-the-ground sales force, to deliver on these ideas-because by identifying and serving those customers (and in some sense ignoring the rest), you will be doing precisely what is necessary to maximize their long-term value and your company’s profits."

Trechos retirados de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage (Wharton Executive Essentials)" de Peter Fader.

sexta-feira, janeiro 06, 2023

Tantas interrogações

"For now, let’s start with the basics-a definition of customer centricity:
Customer centricity is a strategy that aligns a company’s development and delivery of its products and services with the current and future needs of a select set of customers in order to maximize their long-term financial value to the firm.
...
We will be discussing the many nuances of this definition throughout the book, but that one sentence is basically customer centricity in a nutshell: a fundamental acknowledgment that not all customers are created equal; a commitment to identify those customers who matter most; and a willingness to dedicate disproportionate amounts of resources not only to understand what those customers want but to deliver what they want-and by extension, create a stable, lucrative, and evermore profitable future.
...
There is one overarching reason why customer centricity demands such sweeping organizational change, and that reason goes right back to the daring, radical idea that not all customers are created equal and therefore should not and cannot be treated as equals. It's an idea we will come back to again and again.
In my definition of customer centricity, the customer-centric way of doing business specifically calls on organizations to identify a select set of customers. These are the important ones, the lucrative ones, the ones you should be spending your time thinking about, planning around, producing and working for-the right customers. These are the customers who matter. Of course, in the product-centric world, there are no right customers. There is no dividing line between the important ones and the rest. They are all just customers-the nameless, faceless hordes who gobble up (or ignore) whatever it is Company X is attempting to sell."

O tema e a ideia não são novos neste blogue. Para mim são verdades básicas, mas leio isto e penso no que li no jornal Público no artigo, ""Mais 10 cêntimos a garrafa e a cooperativa ganhava mais 1,7 milhões"". 

A mensagem acima é para quem quer aumentar a produtividade a sério sem fazer braço de ferro com os clientes. A produtividade aumenta não porque se tem poder arbitrário sobre os clientes, mas porque se oferece em contrapartida mais valor a esses clientes-alvo.

Este artigo do Público deixa-me com várias interrogações:

  • A quem se dirige Jaime Quendera nesta entrevista? Aos clientes? Aos consumidores? Aos concorrentes, procurando sinalizar mensagens de forma legal?

"São, mas o mercado é como é e não como eu gostaria que ele fosse. Alguém acha que eu não subo mais os preços porque não me apetece? Aliás, como vendemos milhões de garrafas, qualquer alteração teria um impacto enorme na facturação, certo? Se eu vendesse a minha produção para o canal off trade (17 milhões de garrafas da CASIP) a mais 1 cêntimo por garrafa, facturava mais 170 mil euros, mas se em vez de 1 cêntimo eu cobrasse mais 10 cêntimos por garrafa de Pegões – para muitos consumidores isso nem mexe no seu poder de compra — ganhava mais 1,7 milhões de euros. Já viu isso? É dinheiro, não é? Só que o mercado, como tem muito vinho, não permite aumentos destes. Ponto final
[Moi ici: Quando o foco é o produto, e não o cliente...]
 

...

E como vai evoluir o posicionamento de Portugal nos mercados externos?

Aí, acho que, naqueles países que não são preconceituosos, temos boas oportunidades, em termos de volume e de preço. No Canadá, nalguns países asiáticos ou do Leste, os consumidores começam a perceber que a qualidade de um vinho francês ou italiano a 7 euros é equivalente a um vinho português de 3 euros. Seja como for, sempre que há crises mais acentuadas a CASIP cresce porque o consumidor tende a fazer compras mais ponderadas e de menor custo — e é aqui que somos competitivos." [Moi ici: O clássico exemplo de não mexer no produto e procurar mercados alternativos para poder praticar melhores preços]

O trecho que se segue deixa-me muitas questões quanto ao real significado da mensagem. É literal? É preciso algum esforço de exegese para chegar a um outro significado que representa a verdadeira mensagem, a mensagem pretendida para uma das audiências referidas acima? 

"Eu nasci e cresci no mundo do vinho. O vinho faz parte da nossa cultura. Não é um produto de luxo. Sei que o mercado é estratificado, mas dá-me muito mais gozo permitir que um maior número de pessoas tenha acesso a bons vinhos a preços acessíveis, ... É a minha maneira de ver as coisas." [Moi ici: Um dos clientes da cooperativa são os sócios que precisam de escoar uvas, muitas uvas...]

Trechos iniciais retirados de "Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage" de Peter Fader.

quarta-feira, janeiro 04, 2023

Quem são os melhores e os piores clientes?

Há milhões de anos que neste blogue desafiamos as empresas a questionarem-se e a focarem-se nos seus clientes-alvo, em vez de tentarem ser tudo para todos e torrarem recursos (não esquecer a curva de Stobachoff) de forma ineficaz e ineficiente.

Um artigo publicado em Dezembro pela Harvard Business Review, "Do You Really Understand Your Best (and Worst) Customers?", fez-me recuar aos anos iniciais deste blogue onde focamos por muitas vezes a nossa atenção na necessidade de escolher os clientes-alvo:

"Companies often look at their business by focusing on geographic regions, specific brands or products, or by sales channel. This makes sense, because this data is always at hand, and organizations are often structured around geography or channels. But by looking at data and business problems from a frame of reference in which the customer is the atomic unit for analyzing revenue and profitability, these firms were able to gain a new perspective on the problem they were facing, either properly diagnosing the problem or stopping themselves from making a bad decision.

As you analyze your firm’s revenues and profits, or as you make plans for the future, what’s your unit of analysis?

...

This lack of focus on individual customer data is often a mistake. Revenues are generated by customers pulling out their wallets and paying for your products and services. Revenue is the sum of the value of all the customer transactions that occurred in a given time period.

Many firms recognize the need to think differently about using customer data, but they do not know where to start. They are often trapped in an old-fashioned view of their business, structured around products or channels. How do you approach the task of getting your people to shift their perspective and start thinking about your firm’s performance using the customer as the atomic unit of revenue and profitability?"

Um conjunto de perguntas que podem ajudar a perceber quem são os clientes-alvo. Primeiro, as que se encontram no âmbito de "Lens 1: Who are our Best and Worst Customers?". 

"How many customers did we have last year? How do these customers differ in terms of their value to the firm? For example, how many customers purchased from us just once last year? How many customers accounted for half of our revenue last year? Half of our profit? If we compare, say, the 10% most profitable customers to the 10% least profitable, what lies behind these differences? To what extent are they driven by differences in the number of transactions, the average value per transaction, and average margin per transaction? Digging deeper, what about differences in the types of products they purchased?

The set of simple analyses that explore how different our customers are from each other lead to a fundamental conclusion: customers are not equal. Most people underestimate just how unevenly revenue and profit are distributed across customers."

Segundo, as que se encontram no âmbito de "Lens 2: How is Customer Behavior Changing?".

Terceiro, as que se encontram no âmbito de "Lens 3: How Does a Cohort of Customers Change Over Time?".

"Much like Copernicus changed the way people thought about the earth’s place in the universe, we have observed that taking a view of the firm’s performance using the customer as the unit of analysis can have a similarly profound impact on the way the firm thinks about assessing performance and planning for growth. This results in a mindset shift for organizations to move from talking about “what makes us money” to “who makes us money.”"

Acredito que o uso destas perguntas pode ajudar a analisar os dados para os transformar em informação que pode ser avaliada e usada para a tomada de decisões estratégicas, como perceber que há clientes sérios e honestos, mas que não são clientes-alvo, são mais um prego no caixão.

sábado, outubro 08, 2022

"your interests overlap, but they are not the same"

"The mantra that 'the customer is always king' requires interpretation, I learned. The customer is transactional; your interests overlap, but they are not the same. You provide a good service; you delight the customer, but you maintain margins sufficient for a good living and protect your own interests. [Moi ici: Demasiadas vezes quem negoceia o preço com o cliente, a seguir aceita alterações que sabotam as margens negociadasYou do not necessarily cede to every demand a consumer makes, yet if a loyal customer suggests a discount for a large purchase, you seek ways to accommodate them. It is a relationship based on negotiation and mutual respect, not excessive subservience: the customer is king, but not an autocrat.

...

Ultimately, a business exists to serve a human need, so its orientation, and the application of everyone in the enterprise, must be geared to that. This means that the principles of understanding the customer, meeting their needs, of fairness and assertiveness in negotiations are timeless and will always be central.

...

Customers in business-to-business relationships have their money-making logic, you have yours. Understanding this is key to understanding behaviour and as a guide in negotiations."

A verdade é que a figura acima é uma simplificação da realidade. A figura acima assume que o fornecedor escolheu os seus clientes-alvo. O mais provável é que não o tenha feito e parta do princípio de que tudo o que vem à rede é peixe. 

E para quem faz exercícios sobre partes interessadas na ISO 9001, o que fazem com os requisitos relevantes dos clientes que não coincidem com os da empresa? Dizer não é o princípio de ter uma estratégia para o negócio. Já os oiço: "Sacrilégio!"

OK, continuem a pagar para trabalhar.

Trechos retirados de "Deliver What You Promise" de Bali Padda. 

sábado, outubro 01, 2022

O retrato (parte III)


Resultados financeiros decorrem da capacidade de criar, capturar e extrair valor. Recuo a 2008 a Larreché em A originação de valor (parte I)

Imaginem o salário mínimo subir para 2000 euros por mês. 
O que é que isso significaria? Para muitas empresas significaria o fim, ponto. Por mais eficientes que sejam, ou passem a ser, nunca conseguiriam extrair e capturar valor suficiente para serem rentáveis. Por isso é que Taleb fala da incapacidade das empresas subiram na escala de valor quando chegamos a este patamar de exigência:
"Systems don’t learn because people learn individually – that’s the myth of modernity. Systems learn at the collective level by the mechanism of selection: by eliminating those elements that reduce the fitness of the whole, provided these have skin in the game"
Por isso, é que a resposta é a The "flying geese" model, ou deixem as empresas morrer!!!

Não se pode capturar nem extrair mais valor do que aquele que se pode criar. Let this phrase sink in. ⚓

Assim, a primeira preocupação deve ser a criação de valor. Para termos uma empresa sustentável, uma empresa capaz de pagar os seus custos, investir no futuro e remunerar os accionistas quanto precisamos facturar. Quantas unidades temos de produzir a que preço médio? Que cenários são razoáveis?

Que tipos de clientes querem os nossos produtos que podem ser vendidos na gama dos preços que precisamos? Que tipos de construção, que quantidades, como podemos chegar até eles, ou eles a nós? 

Aqui talvez faça sentido uma regra simples para, logo num primeiro contacto contacto, evitar o investimento de tempo em projectos que nunca darão retorno positivo: quantidade vs preço vs construção vs prazo de entrega e eventualmente altura do ano (altura com menos trabalho pode levar a praticar preços mais baixo?)

A seguir: 
  • Como capturar mais valor?
  • Como extrair mais valor?

terça-feira, setembro 27, 2022

O retrato (parte II)

O retrato (parte I).

Para acelerar o processo, antes de fazer o estudo estatístico previsto na parte I, olha-se para o esquema:

E avança-se com:
  • escolher 2 clientes que parecem encaixar-se em cada uma das 3 categorias da figura acima;
  • recolher todas as encomendas desses 6 clientes;
  • investigar e procurar pistas objectivas para explicar porque é que obtemos os resultados que temos com esses clientes.
Interessante que este tema, tenha sido elegido por Roger Martin para o seu post de ontem, "Shutting Down Losers". Basta olhar para esta imagem dele:

Para recordar a curva de Stobachoff.

"Compared to the academic world, it is almost as hard to stop something that isn’t working, but it is way easier to start something new. Companies start too many things without a lot of thought and struggle mightily with stopping, which is why companies end up continuing lots of things that don’t make sense but form part of the entrenched status quo.
...
[Moi ici: Olhando para o gráfico acima] But whenever I ask about getting rid of the 50% of stuff that takes profits down from 140% to 100%, I get concerted pushback as to why it would be a bad and/or infeasible idea.  [Moi ici: Tão, mas tão comum ...] The arguments take one of two forms, both variants of shared economics.
...
[Moi ici: Só Deus sabe quantas vezes me responderam que não podemos deixar de servir os clientes deficitários porque prejudicaríamos a parte lucrativa do negócio. Lembro-me de mais do que um empresario a expor a sua versão da piada negra "perdemos dinheiro na unidade, mas compensa no agregado". Duhhhhhhh!!!! E eu é que era o burro que não via bem a coisa… 😶] However, if the claim that the wining business would cease winning without continued operation of the losing business is actually true, then the winning business isn’t actually a winning business. In fact, it is not a separable business. The two are one business that (typically) is a mediocre performer. One just looks like it is a winning business because it isn’t being charged the full costs of its operations but rather is being subsidized by the losing business absorbing some of its costs. [Moi ici: Faz-me lembrar as guerras que tinha com um responsável comercial nos anos 90 que não incluía o custo da entrega das emcomendas a clientes a mais de 100 km porque, segundo ele, se incluir esse custo, não ganhamos os projectos] It is important for the combination to be treated as one mediocre business — which is what it actually is. There should be no more heaping of praise on the winning business for winning to such a lovely extent. It is just part of a mediocre business — and in due course, mediocre businesses should be exited."







sexta-feira, setembro 23, 2022

O retrato


No modelo do século XX actividade era sinónimo de resultados positivos. 
Em Mongo, actividade não é necessariamente bom sinal, basta recordar os pregos no caixão.

Consigo ver tantas empresas cheias de trabalho, mas que se calhar estão a perder dinheiro. Qual a abordagem que vou seguir com uma delas que me contactou?

1 Listar actividades
  • cartografar as diferentes variantes do processo - ganhar encomendas
  • cartografar o processo que transforma uma encomenda ganha em produto acabado entrado em armazém
  • cartografar o processo que expede o produto acabado e recebe o dinheiro
  • Criar um modelo de custeio com o apoio de empresa de contabilidade
2 Listar clientes

3 Para cada cliente, calcular vendas

4 Para cada cliente e linha de encomenda estimar lucro líquido 
“A margem bruta não prevê o lucro líquido: Vários conjuntos importantes de custos críticos – custos de vendas e marketing, custos operacionais e da cadeia de fornecimento e custos indirectos – não são incluídos no cálculo da margem bruta, e esses custos são decisivos no ambiente de negócios atual (isto é, grande em relação ao lucro líquido, criando uma forte alavancagem de lucro) em que o custo para servir varia muito de cliente para cliente e até mesmo dentro dos clientes.”
5 Classificar clientes em três grupos:

Profit Peaks: clientes de vendas elevadas e lucro elevado (normalmente cerca de 20% dos clientes que geram 150% dos lucros)

Profit Drains: clientes com vendas elevadas e lucro ou prejuízo baixo (normalmente cerca de 30% dos clientes que corroem cerca de 50% dos lucros potenciais)

Profit Drains: clientes com vendas baixas e lucro baixo que geram lucro mínimo

Sem este retrato, nada feito.

Trecho retirado de “Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive” de Jonathan S. Byrnes

quinta-feira, agosto 25, 2022

Entimema

Há dias descobri uma palavra, entimema, para algo que me aborrece quando a pratico, ou outros a praticam. 

Recordo daqui:
"Muitas vezes tomamos decisões e clarificamos e somos claros sobre o que decidimos, mas quase sempre esquecemos de enunciar, de tornar claro e transparente aquilo a que renunciamos, e quais são os pressupostos e implicações das nossas decisões.

Por exemplo, vejo muitas empresas entusiasmadas com a aplicação das metodologias lean desenvolvidas na Toyota, mas poucas sabem que o Toyota Production System parte do pressuposto que o planeamento da produção está congelado 8 semanas para a frente?"

Na Wikipedia, sobre entimema pode ler-se:

"The first type of enthymeme is a truncated syllogism, or a syllogism with an unstated premise.

Here is an example of an enthymeme derived from a syllogism through truncation (shortening) of the syllogism:

"Socrates is mortal because he's human."

The complete formal syllogism would be the classic:

All humans are mortal. (major premise – unstated)

Socrates is human. (minor premise – stated)

Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (conclusion – stated)

While syllogisms lay out all of their premises and conclusion explicitly, these kinds of enthymemes keep at least one of the premises or the conclusion unstated."


Por que escrevo sobre isto? Por causa deste artigo de Roger Martin, "Segmentation & Strategy" onde se pode ler:
"Segments aren’t homogeneous. It isn’t as simple as ‘these are our customers’ and ‘those are yours.’ Instead, there are many shades. Your choices make your offering perfect for someone — portrayed as the black dot in both sides of the illustration above. The circle on the left is a view of the segment from above with the two axes connoting segmentation variables, and the right is a view from the side with the vertical axis connoting value in excess of the best competitive alternative — I think of it as an upside-down bowl sitting on a counter top. For the dot customer, its desires match perfectly with your offering. Because of that perfect match, that customer is at the very center of the circle on the left and at the very peak of the curve on the right.

Radiating out from that perfect customer are customers who value your offering ever less — they are farther from the center of the circle on the left and are farther down the upside-down bowl on the left. If a customer is located at the very edge of the circle on the left, it is indifferent between your offer and that of a competitor (or competitors). And they will be at the lip of the bowl on the right — for them, there is no value advantage of your offer over that of competition. Think about it in terms of heat. Customers in the center are intensely hot about your offer and as you radiate from the cetnter, they get ever cooler about your offer until they are completely indifferent. So, your market is defined by the size of the customer population within the circumference of your circle/to the lip of your bowl.

The bigger the circle/bowl, the more valuable your strategy. [Moi ici: É aqui que a palavra entimema começa a fazer-se sentir]
...
The more successful and valuable offerings have a shallow and lengthy drop-off from the perfect customer. The less valuable — even though highly valuable to the customers within their tiny circle — have a steep drop-off.

The steepness of the drop-off is what makes the difference between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs. Many unsuccessful entrepreneurs design an offering that is extremely valuable to the perfect customer — typically themselves — but the drop-off is so steep that their idea collapses, not because it didn’t create value, but because the steepness of the drop-off makes it impossible to make the economics work. Successful entrepreneurs design their offering in a way that appeals to a much broader audience.  [Moi ici: Quem são os clientes-alvo para o Roger Martin? PMEs? Não! As empresas com que Roger Martin trabalha são empresas grandes, empresas que precisam de volume e que não podem ser muito focadas num determinado tipo de cliente. Para uma PME a situação é completamente oposta]

The implication is that you need to design for your perfect customer but equally think carefully about the decline curve. If you obsess about the perfect customer and not about the shape of the value decline curve, you will be out of business." [Moi ici: Para PMEs o que interessa é a capacidade de gerar paixão assimétrica, a capacidade de falar para uma tribo de sangue. Sem isso, boa sorte a tentar subir na escala de valor e a conseguir aumentar preços para poder competir por recursos]

terça-feira, abril 26, 2022

"the only choice in the hearts and minds of your market segment"

Neste postal escrevi:
"As regras do jogo económico estão a ser revistas e algo diferente vai emergir da confusão. Entretanto, julgo que esta previsão que se segue não andará longe do que veremos:
"In a digitally transformed economy, CP enterprises are normally better off spending money to save time than to spend time to save money. The shorter the offering’s life cycle, the more this is the case.
...
but as time displaces money as the scarcest ingredient in the economic equation, agile must come to the fore. ... so taking time out of our processes as opposed to taking money out needs to be our first (although not our only) priority."
Quantos empresários vão conseguir mudar de mindset? Deixar de lado algoritmos familiares, mas desactualizados, e abraçar outros que têm de ser construídos durante o decorrer do jogo, não é tarefa para qualquer um."

Mais empresários precisam de perceber que o importante não é o output que sai das suas empresas, mas o resultado, o valor, que os clientes conseguem gerar na sua vida ao processar esses outputs como inputs nos seus processos. Assim, que fazem a ponte para o valor, têm uma base para deixar de ver o preço como o factor mais importante para a escolha do cliente. Em vez de se concentrarem na eficiência interna, podem olhar para argumentos de venda na vida do cliente (rapidez, conveniência, custo do ciclo de vida, desempenho superior, design, ...) e abandonar o medo da competição pelo preço mais baixo. Contudo, isto implica deliberar quem são os clientes-alvo e conhecê-los:

"The price people are willing to pay for a product or service is equal to the perceived use value they anticipate receiving from their purchase or investment. Because not everyone has the same perception of what constitutes use value, not everyone is a prospective buyer of your brand or your kind of product or service—hence the recognition of market segmentation and the identification of different target audiences.

...

The profit margin is thus equal to the utility that a product or service delivers to its intended target audience. Therefore, the challenge of any business, with the exception of monopolies and oligopolies, is to add more utility to its value proposition targeting a specific audience than its immediate competitors. In other words, pursuing this strategy to become that target audience’s “obvious choice” supplier—and thus standing out as the only choice in the hearts and minds of your market segment."[Moi ici: Daí além da concorrência imperfeita, os monopólios informais ou seja "the only choice in the hearts and minds"]

Trechos retirados de "The Root Cause: Rethink Your Approach to Solving Stubborn Enterprise-Wide Problems" de Hans Norden.