"Lost in translation"

"A strategic initiative is worthwhile only if it does one or more of the following: creates value for customers by raising their willingness to pay, creates value for employees by making work more attractive, or creates value for suppliers by reducing their operating cost.

...

I believe that strategic management faces an attractive, back-to-basics opportunity. By simplifying strategy—by selecting fewer initiatives with greater impact—we can make it more powerful. In this article, I describe an easy-to-use framework called value-based strategy, which gives executives a common language for evaluating strategic initiatives and developing a holistic view of the many activities taking place within their organizations."

Estratégia ...

Valor (clientes-alvo)

Iniciativas (projectos de transformação) ...

Tudo coisas que escasseiam nas PMEs... e são tão preciosas e necessárias. 

Sexta-feira passada dei uma formação via internet (um estónio, uma alemã, um irlandês, e um senegalês). Por duas ou três vezes ... usávamos as mesmas palavras, mas queríamos dizer coisas diferentes. 

Como falar em estratégia, valor e iniciativas com PMEs e elas perceberem: cancro, preço e concorrentes, e lista de tarefas.

Trechos retirados de "Eliminate Strategic Overload". Um artigo com muito que se lhe diga, mas para já apenas esta preocupação.

"The tendency to obsess over revenues rather than profits"

Gosto desta sistematização que procura ilustrar o quanto o one size fit all não serve:

"A practice’s ability to deliver value to clients rests on the skills of its professionals, and the skill set of those professionals affects the choice of clients. In turn, the clients being served affect the development of the professionals’ skills. The strategy of a practice therefore is tightly linked to its clients and the professionals serving them. Whom a practice hires affects the clients it can serve, the clients it serves affect how the skills of its professionals evolve, how the skill set evolves affects the clients the practice can acquire in the future, and the cycle keeps repeating."

"To achieve superior performance, a practice has to manage both its capabilities and its client portfolio systematically.

A useful way to examine portfolios is to determine where clients fall in the four quadrants formed by comparing the cost to serve clients (CTS) with clients’ willingness to pay (WTP)."

"Most practices discover that their clients are spread across all four quadrants. That indicates that they have no clear strategy and are trying to be everything to everyone. This happens mainly because they can’t say no to clients. Irrational confidence about being able to turn any situation around makes it hard to pass up opportunities. And a lot of practices will undertake any task a client puts forward rather than allow a competitor to develop a relationship with it. The tendency to obsess over revenues rather than profits, moreover, fosters an “any business is good business” mentality."

Trechos retirados de "What Professional Service Firms Must Do to Thrive" 

"working to please the pleasable is a lot more likely to pay off"

 Na senda dos meus postais sobre Bieber, ou sobre um negócio ter inimigos, ou não ter 100% de clientes satisfeitos, este texto de Seth Godin, "Pleasing the unpleasable" que o meu amigo Paulo me mandou:

"There are bosses, customers and partners who will never be happy.

And sometimes, despite the futility, we work to please them anyway.

Because that can be a compass. It can help us do the work that will satisfy others (or ourselves).

It can also be a trap, an endless treadmill of disappointment that leads nowhere in particular.

We should be clear about which one we’re on. Because working to please the pleasable is a lot more likely to pay off."

"Limit the amount of money you have around"

Um artigo sobre o problema de ter demasiado dinheiro, de não ter constrangimentos, "What We Can Learn From The Failure Of Quibi":

"I’ve launched countless businesses in my career and one thing I’ve learned is that you need to keep capital scarce in the early days. Limiting the amount of money you have around forces people to face up to problems and solve them. You can’t ignore warning signs when you’re close to broke.

Quibi, on the other hand, failed because it did ignore signals."

Outro excelente ponto é:

"Conventional marketing strategy dictates that you identify the largest addressable market for your product. That, after all, is where you can reach the most people, scale your business and earn the most money. So it made sense for Quibi to target Millennials in search of “quick bites” to watch while on line at Starbucks.

Yet when you’re launching something new and different, you don’t want the largest addressable market which, almost by definition, already has a lot of companies serving it. Instead, you want to identify a hair-on-fire use case—a problem that somebody needs solved so badly that they almost literally have their hair on fire. That’s where you’ll find customers to put up with the inevitable bugs and glitches that always come up."

Repensar a situação

Esquema adaptado do capítulo II do livro SMASH: Using Market Shaping to Design New Strategies for Innovation, Value Creation, and Growth de Kaj Storbacka e Suvi Nenonen. 

1 - Que recursos a empresa possui? Em que é que a empresa se distingue ao aplicar esses recursos?

2 - Que actores participam na rede? Que recursos e capacidades possuem? Que recursos e capacidades estão em falta na rede?

3 - O que é que o cliente procura e valoriza? O que é dor para ele?

4 - O que é que outros participantes da rede procuram e valorizam? O que é dor para eles?

Gosto de começar por olhar para o que pode ser a rede...

Depois, pergunto em que é que somos bons, em que é que fazemos a diferença? As PMEs têm de olhar para o que têm à mão, não têm tempo nem dinheiro para abstracções, têm de partir daquilo que já está a resultar, nem que seja só com um segmento pequeno de clientes, e começar a construir a partir daí. (1)

Quem são os clientes-alvo? O que procuram e valorizam? (3)

Como é que os outros participantes na rede podem ajudar a criar o valor que os clientes-alvo procuram? (2) Por que é que eles estarão dispostos a participar na rede, o que têm ganhar em fazer parte dela?(4)

Despedir clientes

"Ogilvy met with the CEO of an unnamed client. “I said I’ve come to resign your business. He asked why. I said because your Executive Vice President is a shit… He’s treating your people atrociously and he’s treating my people atrociously. Now what he does to your people—that’s your business. But I’m not going to allow this man to go on demoralizing the people of Ogilvy & Mather.” He also resigned the Rolls Royce account. “The last 600 cars you sent to the United States don’t work. And I will no longer be a party to recommending that people buy them.”

...

Ogilvy was irritated by package goods manufacturers who spent more money on sales promotions than on advertising. “They are spending twice as much on price-cutting as on building brands… they are training consumers to buy on price instead of brand.” He concluded that “the men who employ them are more interested in next quarter’s earnings than in building their brands.” This relates to his repulsion for “the jackasses on Wall Street.”

Trechos retirados de "The Unpublished David Ogilvy"

Para reflexão

 "Given how much our culture depends on finding out what’s new, it’s surprising that few have figured out how to be smart about it. If you’re a creator, the truth remains what the truth has been ever since Yahoo tried to sort the web by hand: the best way to make a hit is to build something for the smallest viable audience and make it so good that people tell their peers."

Trecho retirado de "Who is good at discovery?" 

Is the customer always right?

 "The reality is that we are in an era ruled by uncertainty. In one recent survey, more than 80 percent of business leaders said that they were likely to make significant and long-lasting changes in how they organized work and interacted with and served customers. [Moi ici: Remember the punctuated equilibrium and sudden shifts] Opportunities to redesign the business and do something substantially different usually come only after an event such as a merger or when a startup suddenly scales. But the wide-ranging effects of the coronavirus pandemic give all businesses the impetus for change.

.

How do you as a company leader design for this different world? When the ground shifts beneath you, the first thing to do is find a solid place to stand — and that is your value proposition. Customers come to you for a reason: because you’re innovative or top-quality, because you’re a one-stop shop, or because you build deep relationships.

...

1. Segment your customers. “The customer is always right” is one of the oldest and most misleading adages in business. The customer is always right only if you have the right customer. [Moi ici: Something that we defend here long time ago: here and here] Has your “right customer” changed? [Moi ici: Something we spoke about last Monday] Through no fault of yours, businesses you’ve worked with or customers whose needs you successfully met may have temporarily retreated or changed to a new model. How can you still be “right” for each other?

.

Consider Panera Bread — a fast-casual restaurant chain, meaning it’s a cut above fast food but is not at the level of waitstaff service. Panera’s value proposition emphasizes food made fresh from sustainably sourced ingredients. Its right customers have traditionally been office workers: individuals picking up a bagel and coffee for breakfast or meeting a colleague for lunch; groups for which it caters a selection of sandwiches and salads for meetings. That right customer is no longer in the same place; she is probably working from home now, and is likely to continue doing so at least some of the time for the foreseeable future. Lunch around the conference table? Well, maybe next year.

...

You might also find that your company has new right customers: These might be people or companies that have changed in ways that could benefit you if you design ways to connect with them, or that have been stranded by the incapacity of others, or that are worth your attention now although they weren’t before."

Excerpts taken from "Forget about the “new normal”: Design something different"

Ginásios, demografia e clientes-alvo

Recordar "Demografia e clientes-alvo" onde cito um texto que escrevi em 2015 e outro em 2017:

"Quando um ginásio coloca pósteres de moças e moços a caminho de algum concurso de culturismo ou de beleza, está a apostar e a dizer ao mercado quem são os seus alvos e, ao mesmo tempo está a dizer aos seniores: nós não somos para vocês."

"E interrogo-me porque é que nunca vi um ginásio dedicado explicitamente ao sector sénior?
.
Têm dimensão, têm tempo livre, têm poder de compra, têm um trabalho concreto por realizar (recuperar/manter e prolongar qualidade de vida, autonomia, autoestima, ...)" 

Agora oiçam o discurso a seguir ao minuto 43 aqui.




Quem são os clientes-alvo?
A comunicação está dirigida para eles ou, pelo contrário, afasta-os?

"Customer focus is a choice—and a critically important one"

Mais um trecho retirado de "Remarkable Retail", desta feita do capítulo 16 "Essential #5: Personal". Só que desta vez parece retirado deste blogue:

"A while later, Bessemer Trust, a leading private wealth management firm, ran an ad in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “We may not be right for you.” The copy then explained the bank’s narrow customer focus and highly specialized services.

In the quest for maximizing revenue, many companies are afraid to make a similar leap. But as you design your journey to remarkable, one of the first questions you must answer is: who are we building this strategy for? Customer focus is a choice—and a critically important one. You must push yourself to go beyond the “affluent suburban soccer moms” target customer definition to get real clarity and granularity around which people in particular, under which specific set of conditions, are at the center of your bull’s-eyes. Notice the plural there: you likely have more than one target. You must also be able to articulate how your value proposition meets those customers in a unique, highly relevant, and remarkable way. With that precise definition you can build your strategies for the best-fit customers and be at peace with letting the ones go that aren’t right for you.

Out of either inertia, lack of experience, or fear, retailers, organizations, bloggers, and all sorts of individual artists often chase the largest possible audience. They want the most followers, the most traffic to their website, the largest addressable market, and other goals that have way more to do with quantity instead of quality. In turn they dilute their pitch to become just okay instead of remarkable. If you have a great product, are serving a wonderful social cause, or have an incredible story to be told or an amazing song in your heart, it’s natural to want to reach more customers. If you are investing a lot of resources in pursuit of building a customer base or an audience, you should be mindful of the scale required to achieve viability. Sometimes size does matter.

The flip side of gaining clarity and granularity around who is at the center of your bull’s-eye is also being crystal clear about who your product or service isn’t for. The siren song of growth at all costs may distract you and pull you away from your center. Resist the temptation. Being remarkable is often inherently linked to being, as Scott Galloway reminds us, “special, not big.” As you expand from those special qualities that first commanded certain customers’ attention, enrolled them fully in your mission, and motivated them to spread the word, you risk becoming less remarkable (or even alienating) to what I call “obsessive core customers” because what it takes to reach a wider audience waters down what made you successful in the first place."

"gross generalities about macro trends and underlying economics"

Há muitos anos que escrevo sobre a importância de trabalhar para clientes-alvo e não para a média do mercado.

Recordo o uso do termo: miudagem.

Por isso foi engraçado encontrar no capítulo 6 “The Future Will Not Be Evenly Distributed” do livro “Remarkable Retail” este trecho:

"Once the dust settles, we can tote up the winners and losers on the corporate side, but it will be clear that consumers throughout most of the world will have realized more choice, lower prices, and improved convenience that we could scarcely imagine even five years ago. It’s almost like a welfare program for consumers, rich or poor. On average, it’s all good.
But if you find much actionable data in the fact that the average person living today has one breast and one testicle, then continue your focus on industry market-share averages, broad conclusions about “the customer,” and gross generalities about macro trends and underlying economics."

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte IV)

Parte I, parte II e parte III.

"RULE #4: FEWER PASSIONATE CUSTOMERS ARE BETTER THAN A LOT OF INDIFFERENT ONES.
...
Value pricing requires selling to the right people. Saying good-bye is the hardest part. When switching to the Passion Economy approach, it is counterintuitive, yet essential, to stop working with many of your existing customers. If you haven’t applied the rules of the Passion Economy before, it is highly unlikely that most of your customers truly recognize your full value and are paying you the appropriate amount for it.
...
Don’t say good-bye too quickly. You can never have too narrow a niche, but you can rush to your niche too quickly. ... It will take time to find enough members of that group and persuade them that you and only you are right for the job. It can be tempting to wake up one day, realize that your customers aren’t the right fit, and tell them all to go away. But unless you have amassed a sizable war chest of excess cash, it is best to transition slowly and deliberately.
...
Some firms create a new name and, for a while, essentially operate as two companies—a legacy firm for existing customers and a new one that works only with the targeted niche.
...
The best customers, eventually, are the ones who seek you out. When you have identified the proper niche and served clients in that niche well, you will eventually develop a reputation among your target customer base such that new clients reach out to you before you need to pursue them. The narrower your niche, the more likely you are to receive inbound interest rather than having to pursue an aggressive sales strategy.”

The Rules of the Passion Economy (parte I)

Terminei a leitura sem descanso de "The Passion Economy: The New Rules for Thriving in the Twenty-First Century" de Adam Davidson. O tema da paixão é recorrente aqui no blogue:

• Passion is everything (Agosto de 2010)
• Estratégia, locus de controlo, experiência, paixão (Novembro de 2010)
• Paixão e relações amorosas (Fevereiro de 2011)
• Acerca da paixão nas PME (Março de 2015)
• Na sua empresa também há um problema de falta de paixão? (Janeiro de 2016)
• Acerca da paixão (Dezembro de 2016)
• "Passion doesn’t precede mastery, but follows it" (Julho de 2019)

Regresso agora ao capítulo 2 “The Rules of the Passion Economy":

 

"RULE #1: PURSUE INTIMACY AT SCALE.
...
Identify the set of things that you love to do and that you do well. You don’t need to be the best in the world at something. People often succeed because they have a set of various skills that don’t normally go together.
...
Match your passion to the people who most want it. When you have identified that specific passion and set of skills you can offer, you can easily find the people who most want it. They are already self-identified in groups.
...
once you put your passions and abilities together with the right kind of customers, you’ll be amazed by how easy it can be to carve out a profitable niche in this economy.
Once you have those customers (or colleagues), the next step is to listen very closely to their feedback—as well as feedback from those who choose not to be your customers. We no longer live in a “one size fits all” economy. It’s imperative that you constantly hone your products and your skills in response to your customers’ needs.
Listening and matching are both closely related and also sometimes at odds. If you find yourself listening to customers who aren’t right for you and trying desperately to adjust your offering to fit their needs, you are wasting your time and skills. Instead, you should seek other customers, those who are far better matches and whose feedback will help move your business forward or strengthen it."

"It Starts with Strategy"

"the seven steps any business must take to build a robust marketing system.
...
1. It Starts with Strategy...
you’ve got to start with strategy, and strategy starts with knowing your ideal customer.
.
If you don’t understand who your ideal customer is—their core problems and the value you bring to every engagement—how can you possibly find a message that resonates and identify the tactics that will work?
.
The short answer is that you can’t. Every great marketing strategy is rooted in pinpointing your ideal customer and honing in on the ways they want to interact with a business. Only once you’ve established your ideal client can you begin to connect what you offer with how you solve your customer’s problems.
...
3. Content Has Risen to the Strategic Level.
Don’t conflate the word “content” with “blog post.” Content is way bigger than that.
.
Content allows us to take the promise that we made to solve a problem and expand that so we can dominate search, social media, and all other places online where prospects are looking for answers about our brand.
.
We like to use content hubs to create one-stop-shops for the kind of informative, meaningful content that addresses a customers’ needs anywhere along the journey. Hub pages are designed to bring together all relevant information on a certain topic on one page. Think of them as the table of contents for a great online book in your area of expertise.
.
Whether someone’s just discovering your business, are coming back for one last look before they make a first purchase, or are sharing information about you with a friend looking for a referral, content hubs have something for everyone.
.
Content hubs are not only great resources on your website, they help improve your ranking in SEO and ensure that it’s easier for new audiences to discover your business."

Trechos retirados de "Building a Marketing System in 7 Steps"

Planear a execução de uma estratégia

Um artigo interessante que toca em várias ideias que pratico no meu trabalho com as organizações e que há muitos anos descrevo aqui no blogue.

"Step one is to recognize your dependencies, i.e. your key stakeholders. [Moi ici: Desenhar o ecossistema de partes interessadas, um clássico deste blogue] You may think that this will be easy. And in a small business, like a convenience store, it initially is: customers, employees, suppliers, and owners. But then you become aware that some of the employees are also owners, and the complexity grows.
.
The trick is to identify stakeholder roles. The same group of stakeholders can occupy more than one role.
...
An essential second step, and one that I’ve been guilty of not stressing enough with clients, comes with the word “target.” It’s vitally important to identify your “target customer” before moving forward. [Moi ici: Outro clássico deste blogue, a identificação dos clientes-alvo]
...
Isolating the target customer has massive implications, including in other stakeholder groups. ... Your strategic plan can’t be all things to all customers. So, take your time here to clearly define your target customer.
...
The third step requires you to work out what your organization wants from each key stakeholder group for your organization to prosper.[Moi ici: Quando pensamos no que é que a nossa organização quer de uma parte interessada isso ajuda-nos a perceber se um segmento em particular faz sentido para o posicionamento da nossa organização]
...
The fourth step is to identify what these stakeholder groups want from you. These are the key decision-making criteria that stakeholders use when interacting with your business. For example, these might include the factors influencing the decision to purchase from you (customers), work for you (employees), supply to you (suppliers) or invest in you (shareholders). [Moi ici: Outro clássico deste blogue e a base para a elaboração dos mapas da estratégia] 

...
Strategy design, your fifth step, involves deciding what your organization’s positions will be on the identified strategic factors for each key stakeholder group. [Moi ici: Desenhar os mapas da estratégia] This is shaped by the objectives you’ve set for your organization and the knowledge you’ve gleaned about your stakeholders’ current and future needs on strategic factors.

...
The sixth step is continuous improvement. Recognize that no matter what you decide, there is no certainty in the result once you embark on implementation via an action plan and scorecard.
...
 Be prepared to adjust. View your strategic as being locked in an intimate tango with your key stakeholders. This dynamic perspective encourages openness, innovation and a preparedness to change."

Trechos retirados de "6 Steps to Make Your Strategic Plan Really Strategic"

Lidar com as restrições (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

A propósito de restrições, às vezes, o problema é a falta de restrições, a falta de foco. Eis um bom exemplo em "The Dolittle effect":

"Why is the new Dolittle movie so bad? Savaged by critics and viewers, it had:

• One of the most bankable movie stars in the world

• A story that had previously been the basis of two hit movies

• The best CGI houses in the world

• Unlimited time and money

I think the best way to understand why it failed is to look at the reasons above. Ironically, it’s these assets and lack of constraints that created the circumstances that allowed the movie to become a turkey."

E o que é a incapacidade de seleccionar um grupo de clientes-alvo senão uma incapacidade de assumir restrições?

Give me a break!

Custa-me escrever este tipo de artigo em que digo mal de quem pede a baixa de impostos, mas tem de ser.

No postal "I wonder..." que escrevi em Julho de 2008 criticava um hotel de 5 estrelas que cobrava 449€ por noite e que tinha uma promoção em que pagava as portagens de auto-estrada aos clientes. Criticava esse hotel por não conhecer os seus clientes-alvo. Em Janeiro de 2012 dava um exemplo de um outro hotel com uma outra abordagem, muito mais adequada aos seus clientes-alvo.

Ontem à noite li este artigo "IVA no golfe mais baixo pode atrair mais turistas para Portugal". Uma pessoa lê estes artigos e pensa:

- Esta gente é parva? Não, esta gente quer fazer de nós parvos!!!

Ora vejamos, comparem o início e o final do parágrafo:

"Os praticantes de golfe são dos turistas que gastam mais nos países por onde passam e a atividade desportiva ajuda também a combater um dos desafios que o turismo em Portugal enfrenta: a sazonalidade. Mas, neste campeonato, Portugal – que tem mais de 90 campos de golfe – não joga em pé de igualdade: “Há países que têm um IVA mais baixo para o golfe, como Países Baixos, Suécia e Polónia. É uma atividade em que os países concorrem uns com os outros; tens de concorrer com Espanha, Turquia e outros. A diferença na taxa do IVA entre as várias geografias faz uma grande diferença no preço”

E mais à frente:

"Portugal foi eleito em 2018, pela quinta vez, o melhor destino de golfe do mundo. O Algarve – onde estão localizados perto de metade dos campos – é o melhor destino do mundo para este desporto em 2020"

E ainda:

"Estes jogadores “ficam talvez por uma semana, em bons hotéis e gastam dinheiro em alimentação e museus. Os golfistas são dos turistas que gastam mais em termos mundiais. É por isso que a indústria do golfe é tão interessante. Os espanhóis entenderam isso muito bem, fazendo pacotes combinados para darem um IVA mais baixo. Talvez fosse uma boa ideia para Portugal”, diz Klootwijk" 

O senhor Lodewijk Klootwijk, secretário-geral da Golf Course Association of Europe (GCAE), não é obrigado a saber, mas ao menos a associação podia ter algum apoio de assessoria em estratégia.

Dois tópicos: Quem são os clientes-alvo do turismo de golfe em Portugal? Qual o posicionamento do golfe de Portugal?

Vamos aos clientes-alvo:

• Acham mesmo que um cliente-alvo que escolhe bons hotéis e gasta muito está preocupado com o IVA?
• Acham mesmo que o melhor destino de golfe do mundo tem de ter um IVA baixo para captar turistas ricos?

Acham que o turista que faz golfe na Holanda escolhe a Holanda por ter um IVA mais baixo? Acham que o turista que faz golfe na Holanda em Janeiro e o que faz golfe em Portugal em Janeiro usam o IVA como critério?

Give me a break.

Costumo dizer que os maiores inimigos do liberalismo são alguns liberais, pedem coisas que não só são impossíveis no imediato como metem medo aos não liberais, e o que devia ser um processo evolutivo acaba por nunca acontecer. Também posso dizer que os maiores inimigos da descida dos impostos são os argumentos usados pelos defensores das descidas de impostos.

"when speed is low, development requires big investments"

O meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras enviou-me o link para este artigo "Six ingredients of agile organizational design" com o comentário:

"Só agora associei o Scrum como uma resposta para planeamento do Mongo!"

Caro amigo... até apetece exclamar: Duh!!!

Li o artigo duas vezes e das duas vezes sublinhei este trecho:

"Nowadays, a company’s chances of survival are low if it takes too long to create (new) products. Our company becomes slow if we need a number of teams, each producing a part of the product, to be able to create possible customer value. The specialised team approach creates many dependencies between teams when we try to create customer value. We only know if our product (or change) is successful after releasing it in the hands of the customer because that is when we get real feedback and our assumptions are validated. The slower our company is, the longer it takes before we get customer feedback, i.e. return on investment (if any). That’s why when speed is low, development requires big investments." 

E sorri ao relacionar com a série "Acerca da rapidez" e com as novas regras de xadrez. Mongo tem tudo a ver com rapidez, flexibilidade e personalização.

E acerca de:

"Some teams do not even know what value they are creating from a customer point of view: the workers have never seen a real customer or they don’t have one because they deliver so-called “products” to another department."

Fez-me recordar um texto citado aqui no blogue recentemente:

"Leaders who connect employees with end users motivate higher performance, measured in terms of revenue as well as supervisors’ ratings.
...
Customers, clients, patients, and others who benefit from a company’s products and services motivate employees by serving as tangible proof of the impact of their work, expressing appreciation for their contributions, and eliciting empathy, which helps employees develop a deeper understanding of customers’ needs."

Demografia e clientes-alvo

No Financial Times Asia de ontem apanhei este artigo:

Depois, sorri ao ler no Wall Street Journal de ontem o artigo "Aging Japanese Flock to Gyms— For Hot Baths and Small Talk":

"Exercise buff Yukie Watabe just about had it when she went to her fitness club and found older women using the bench-press machine as an actual bench. The women were chatting about how to pickle vegetables at home—a worthy subject for the health-conscious, no doubt, but not quite the vibe Ms. Watabe was looking for. “I complained a couple of times to the staff there. But it seemed they prioritized” the elderly clientele, said Ms. Watabe, 46 years old. She quit the club and now jogs with her husband. Japan’s retired people are taking over establishments traditionally associated with youth and sculpted bodies. The gym of the future, as seen in a country where nearly 30% of the population is over 65, features tai chi classes, lengthy soaks in hot baths and plenty of socializing among folks who have no business meetings to rush back to.
...
At Renaissance, only 3% of members were over 60 a quarter-century ago. Today, one in three are in that category and, depending on the location and time of the day, the customers are nearly all elderly, said a spokeswoman.
...
Yoshihiko Kato, a 49-year old factory worker in Tokyo, recently quit his fitness club and switched to Anytime Fitness, a Minnesota-based chain with outlets in Japan. It appeals to a younger crowd with 24-hour service and a focus on fitness machines rather than amenities for relaxing.
...
“I’m going to get old too, so I don’t want to complain,” said Mr. Kato. At his previous club, he said, “I was a bit annoyed at how a group of old people were chatting nonstop.” For gym operators, elderly members have helped tone up the bottom line. Japan’s fitness industry in 2018 posted a record $4.4 billion in revenue, and government figures show more than half of that comes from people over 60, who tend to buy pricier full memberships."

E recordei:

• A Natureza tem horror ao desperdício (Setembro de 2017) 

"Quando um ginásio coloca pósteres de moças e moços a caminho de algum concurso de culturismo ou de beleza, está a apostar e a dizer ao mercado quem são os seus alvos e, ao mesmo tempo está a dizer aos seniores: nós não somos para vocês.
.
Sabem o quanto gosto de associar biologia e economia. Por isso, vejo este desenvolvimento como: os nutrientes existem (os seniores e os gestores que pensam no futuro do SNS) e as espécies existentes (ginásios) não os consomem. A Natureza tem horror ao desperdício. Por isso, cria novas espécies que aproveitam esses nutrientes (recordar que a evolução natural é fugir de restrições)"

• E quando o mundo muda? (Junho de 2015)

"E interrogo-me porque é que nunca vi um ginásio dedicado explicitamente ao sector sénior?
.
Têm dimensão, têm tempo livre, têm poder de compra, têm um trabalho concreto por realizar (recuperar/manter e prolongar qualidade de vida, autonomia, autoestima, ...)"

Your Right Customer Isn't Only Yours (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

"Your Right Customer Isn't Only Yours
Just as you have more than one "right" customer, you very well may not be your customer's only answer. Price, convenience, desperation, necessity, your inability to meet all your customer's needs (or their unwillingness to rely on only one service provider, which is often good business practice) means you not only have competition for their business but you are being compared, perhaps unfairly, to other servioce providers."

Duas empresas bem diferentes, podem desenhar dois serviços completamernte diferentes, para dois tipos de clientes-alvo bem diferentes, mas não necessariamente para duas perssoas diferentes. A pessoa pode ser a mesma, mas em momentos ou circunstâncias diferentes. Por exemplo:

• comprar um vinho para oferecer vs comprar um vinho para consumo corrente;
• comprar uma série de artigos baratos (pão, peixe, congelados, ...) vs comprar frutas e legumes frescos (variedade, qualidade e frescura).

Esta dualidade na personalidade dos clientes tem o potencial para criar dois tipos de problemas a uma empresa.

"One is making a mistake about who your competitor is.
...
The second and graver danger: working too hard to accede to the wishes of a customer who is unprofitable or otherwise wrong for you. There is something worse than losing a customer, and that is bending over backward to keep one who loses you money. Any service design needs a degree of flexibility after all, each perfect customer is different. But once you start doing things that conflict with your brand, your strategy, and what you are designed to deliver, your attempt to not disappoint customers will inevitably mean you will disappoint yourself." 

Em Agosto de 2008 aprendi:

"the most important orders are 

the ones to which a company says 'no'."

"There are customers you have to say no to. Let's start with the ones you do not want: customers or clients who want what you are not prepared to deliver. Not what you cannot; what you won't. ... Cannot is about capability; won't is about strategy. In most cases, saying no to a potential customer is easier than saying goodbye to a current one, because a current customer was, at some point, your right one.
...
Deciding to part ways with a current client is about acknowledging that something has changed: their needs, your strategy, the chemistry of the parties involved. The more personal the nature of the service or the more direct the interaction is between you and the customers, the harder it is, because, well, it feels and is personal. When you are thinking about saying no, look at why:
Are you saying no because it is something you haven't done or do not want to?
If you haven't done it, why not? Is it resistance to change or genuinely a question of strategy? Is it something you do not do well enough, but could with training, practice, or judicious addition of capabilities or staff?"

Trechos retirados de "Woo, Wow and Win" de Thomas Stewart e Patricia O'Connel.