"become that target audience’s “obvious choice” supplier"

Mais um desfile de temas habituais neste blogue: eficientismo, objectivos versus consequências, obliquidade, originação de valor, clientes-alvo, monopólios informais.

"There seems to be consensus that the purpose of a business is to make money. In other words, success is equated with money. Therefore, everything is given a price tag including people, humanity, health, safety, organizational culture, work climate, values, morality, ethics, pride of workmanship, and the environment.

Consequently, based on theories of operational efficiency, decisions are reduced to an analytic process of determining which solution is economic and which is uneconomic. The one that costs less wins.

...

No one denies the necessity for a commercial enterprise to pursue revenue and a healthy profit margin. The criticism against “making money” is that it should not be professed as the purpose of a business system.

Rather, earning a profit margin is not the purpose of a business but a “prerequisite” for operating a sustainable business. Please do not disregard this distinction between purpose and prerequisite as a matter of semantics, for it is nothing of the sort. Profits are the applause for a job well done, and receiving a standing ovation is the cry for an encore. It is a show of being in demand; it is the proof of a success!

...

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.

Rather than creating use value similar to one’s competitors, different expressions of use value can be created by changing the business’s transformation process.

...

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."

Trecho retirado de "The Root Cause: Rethink Your Approach to Solving Stubborn Enterprise-Wide Problems" de Hans Norden

"sort by price"

"sort by price.

It turns out that a lot of freight shipping is done through an intermediary. Software automatically scans all available options and picks the cheapest one.

Which means that brands don’t matter, customer feedback doesn’t matter and reviews don’t matter. Neither does corporate responsibility or employee satisfaction.

All that matters is the price the shipper pays and ultimately the price of the stock.

Sort by price insulates the producer from the customer. When we resort to a single metric, we get what we measure, and the side effects pile up.

More and more, the choices are, “You’ll get a discount and you will get less than you paid for” and /or “you’ll pay a bit more and you’ll get more than you paid for.”"

Há que escolher outros clientes (reparar que eu não me enganei, é o meu velho "os clientes têm a última palavra, mas o fornecedor tem a primeira). Há que escolher outras prateleiras, as frequentadas pelos clientes-alvo. Há que vender de outra maneira.

Trecho retirado de "“We don’t care” (you won’t let us)" 

"an obsession with creating value and outcomes for customers and users"

Parece retirado deste blogue: 

"The new management innovation is very different. Instead of an industrial-era focus on internal efficiency and outputs, the primary preoccupation in the new age is external: an obsession with creating value and outcomes for customers and users. Instead of starting from what the firm can produce that might be sold to customers, digital firms work backwards from what customers need and then figure out how that might be delivered in a sustainable way. Instead of limiting themselves to what the firm itself can provide, the firm often mobilizes other firms to help meet user needs."

Trechos retirados de "Why Management Innovation Is Hiding In Plain Sight" 

"what gets measured is everything"

"Why don't organizations immediately leap at opportunities to play the Ends Game? [Moi ici: Aqui Ends Game significa trabalhar com os outcomes do cliente e não com os outputs da empresa] Why doesn't an organization, knowing that eliminating waste unlocks market potential, act proactively to shake up the prevailing revenue model in its industry, trying to reach a better alignment with the value customers actually derive in an exchange?

All too often, the remarkable explanation is that such a company is "blinded" by the quality of the products and services it proudly brings to market. This is what we refer to as the quality paradox. At some point, the relentless pursuit of quality makes it almost unimaginable to generate revenue from anything other than the sale of one's offerings. Said differently, when a company obsessively directs its efforts toward continuously innovating its products and services, it risks becoming accountable to its offering rather than to its customers.

...

One probable cause of the quality paradox is surrogation, a concept made popular by Willie Choi, Gary Hecht, and William Tayler in a research article published in 2012. Put in its simplest terms, surrogation occurs when an individual or institution becomes so keenly focused on improving the measure of an underlying construct of interest that it reaches a point where the measure replaces the construct entirely. Surrogation warps the intent behind the old management cliché about "what gets measured, gets done" into something like "what gets measured is everything." 

Trechos retirados de "The ends game : how smart companies stop selling products and start delivering value" de Marco Bertini e Oded Koenigsberg. 

Customers, value and revenue

"What is the problem? Why is commerce still so wasteful? In our mind, the issue is not that customer focus is somehow flawed or broken. To the contrary, the issue is that most organizations fail to take the promise of customer focus to its logical conclusion. That is, the typical company today may well obsess over customers when it comes to designing offerings and positioning them in the market. In fact, we struggle to find a business that doesn't praise its customers, and boast of the attention paid to them, on its corporate website. But then the same company pays hardly any attention to customers when it decides how to earn revenue from them. This lapse shrinks the opportunity in the market.

...

John Wanamaker invented the price tag in 1861.

...

Price tags quickly became the norm because they greatly facilitated the ongoing push for customer focus in production, distribution, and communication.

...

Accordingly, organizations gradually shifted their pricing decisions away from customers and what they value, which was the focus of haggling, to the one piece of information they could trust and readily collect: information on the cost of making an offering and bringing it to market.

In essence, prices became a mere bystander in a company's efforts to build closer ties with customers. Rather than considering how the process of generating revenue could assist in this endeavor, the company concerned itself with how to cover its costs and minimize any interference. The price tag went along for the ride, treated as a tactical afterthought, but this in turn cemented the idea that a company's only logical move is to earn revenue from selling the "stuff" it makes."

Trechos retirados de "The ends game : how smart companies stop selling products and start delivering value" de Marco Bertini e Oded Koenigsberg.   

Não querer ser tudo para todos

Uma mensagem clássica deste blogue: a focalização. Escolher os clientes-alvo e não tentar ser tudo para todos:

"This study empirically examines the impact of firms' pursuing multiple generic strategies, namely, Porter's low-cost and focus strategies. We conceptualize pursuing cost efficiency advantage as a low-cost strategy and restraining rivalry through horizontal differentiation as a focus strategy. Although we corroborate earlier strategy research that each of these strategies alone may have a positive impact on firm profitability, we highlight that mechanisms driving the interaction of these two strategies are, in fact, nonadditive in nature, consistent with recent analytical work. Using the context of the scheduled U.S. passenger airline industry over two decades, we empirically show that combining a low-cost strategy with a focus strategy is, indeed, detrimental to firm profitability, which has important implications for scholarship and practice.

Firms have effectively used low-cost or focus strategies to improve their performance. Our study demonstrates that although firms pursuing either strategy individually can benefit, pursuing these two generic strategies of low-cost and focus simultaneously actually hurts firms' profitability. In essence, we show that when firms pursuing a low-cost strategy already possess a cost efficiency advantage over their rivals for the full customer base, firms have nothing to gain by simultaneously limiting rivalry - through focusing on a smaller customer segment-and thus giving away revenue to rivals. Our insights regarding the combination of different generic strategies caution managers to not be misled by the performance gains of either low-cost and focus strategies individually, but to realize that these two in tandem actually may harm profitability."

Trechos retirados de "Competing both ways: How combining Porter's low-cost and focus strategies hurts firm performance" publicado pela revista Strategic Management Journal em Março último.

Uma transição por fazer ...

"The new management innovation are very different. Instead of an industrial-era focus on internal efficiency and outputs, the primary preoccupation in the new age is external: an obsession with creating value and outcomes for customers and users. Instead of starting from what the firm can produce that might be sold to customers, digital firms work backwards from what customers need and then figure out how that might be delivered in a sustainable way. Instead of limiting themselves to what the firm itself can provide, the firm often mobilizes other firms to help meet user needs."

Quem acompanha este blog desde 2004 pode facilmente recordar o quanto estes temas fazem parte da narrativa desde o início.

O que escrevo acerca do eficientismo, da lição de Marn e Rosiello (o burro era eu), do Evangelho do Valor. O que escrevo acerca de começar pelo fim e isso é olhar para a menina do olho dos clientes-alvo e, a partir do que procuram e valorizam, andar para trás e preparar a organização para entrega sistemática desses inputs (recordar input, não output). E o que escrevo sobre os ecossistemas da procura depois da experiência de 2004 em que o tema emergiu naturalmente de um desafio profissional em mãos, antes de começar a ler sobre o tema.

Quantas empresas ainda precisam de fazer esta transição...

Trecho retirado de "Why Management Innovation Is Hiding In Plain Sight" 

"Sellers Without Sgmentation"

"The primary objective of segmentation through data analytics is to identify the profile of your most successful and profitable existing customers. Your sales force employees might think they know who these customers are, but chances are they’re mostly relying on intuition and experience."

Trechos retirados de "Pricing Strategy Implementation - Translating Pricing Strategy into Results" de Andreas Hinterhuber e Stephan M. Liozu.

 

Clientes versus concorrentes

Há dias citei aqui e comentei:

It is axiomatic that a first step in a firm's formulation of competitive strategy is the identification of its major competitors (e.g., Porter, 1980). [Moi ici: Não penso assim, não sigo este axioma. Tenho receio dos Dick Dastardly desta vida, e dos motards. Prefiro imaginar uma paisagem competitiva cheia de picos. Prefiro começar por determinar quem são os clientes-alvo e qual o ecossistema que deve ser mobilizado para os seduzir, satisfazer e desenvolver]

Entretanto, ontem li "Research in Cognition and Strategy: Reflections on Two Decades of Progress and a Look to the Future" de Sarah Kaplan e publicado no Journal of Management Studies 48:3 May 2011, e voltei a pensar no mesmo tema. A autora faz um trabalho muito interessante a descrever a evolução da investigação sobre as categorias de conhecimento. Outra vez um foco na categorização dos concorrentes. Por exemplo:

"Firms from other parts of the UK and other countries, even if they produced fully-fashioned knitwear at similar price points, were seen as being in different businesses or only ‘somewhat’ competitors

...

‘Cognitive oligopolies’ exist because competitors define each other as such.

...

They showed that managers based their categorization of competitors on a hierarchical understanding of the product offerings

...

Managers of larger hotels categorized competitors over a wider range of prices than did those of small hotels

...

The Scottish knitwear study showed how the categorization of different competitors as direct rivals affected the strategic choices and actions of firms."

Enquanto lia isto pensava em como seria se os autores citados tivesse optado por trabalhar com base na categorização dos clientes. À noite fui à minha biblioteca e saquei o meu velho "Managing for Results" de Peter Drucker, publicado em 1986 e fui ao capítulo 6, "The Customer Is the Business" ... continua tão actual e tão fresco:

"Business is a process which converts a resource, distinct knowledge, into a contribution of economic value in the marketplace. The purpose of a business is to create a customer. [Moi ici: O propósito não é o de ganhar aos concorrentes] The purpose is to provide something for which an independent outsider, who can choose not to buy, is willing to exchange his purchasing power. And knowledge alone  (excepting only the case of the complete monopoly) gives the products of any business that leadership position on which success and survival ultimately depend.

...

1. What the people in the business think they know about customer and market is more likely to be wrong than right. There is only one person who really knows: the customer. Only by asking the customer, by watching him, by trying to understand his behavior can one find out who he is, what he does, how he buys, how he uses what he buys, what he expects, what he values, and so on.

2. The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a “product.” What is paid for is satisfactions. But nobody can make or supply satisfactions as such—at best, only the means to attaining them can be sold and delivered.

...

3. A corollary is that the goods or services which the manufacturer sees as direct competitors rarely adequately define what and whom he is really competing with. They cover both too much and too little.

...

Because the customer buys satisfaction, all goods and services compete intensively with goods and services that look quite different, seem to serve entirely different functions, are made, distributed, sold differently—but are alternative means for the customer to obtain the same satisfaction.

...

5. The customers have to be assumed to be rational. But their rationality is not necessarily that of the manufacturer; it is that of their own situation."

Recordar que o seu campeonato tem de ser outro

Antes de avançar neste postal duas ressalvas:

• Não tenho qualquer informação do terreno, esta experiência de 1987 já estará desactualizada, ou não. 
• Uma boa estratégia tem de ser uma estratégia e ser boa. Ser uma estratégia é mais fácil de testar. Basta recordar o clássico "Mais vale ser rico e com saúde do que pobre e doentio". Assim, se outros olhando para uma estratégia são capazes de visualizar uma alternativa, quer dizer que estamos perante uma estratégia. Saber se essa estratégia é boa ou não, já depende da capacidade de execução e da resposta do mercado.

Ao longo dos anos, aqui e na minha vida profissional, abordo com frequência alguns temas:

• o ecossistema da procura
• os clientes-alvo
• Mongo versus a comoditização.

Este fim de semana li "Imperial e Valor ambicionam ser o "maior player ibérico de chocolate"" e ficou-me um travo amargo na boca. Nem uma vez li "consumidores", "paixão por chocolate", e mesmo "clientes" aparece uma vez como substantivo colectivo escrito pelo autor do artigo. O negócio são números e quota de mercado. 

Pela leitura do artigo percebe-se que o modelo de negócio está focado nos donos das prateleiras, são esses o cliente-alvo. Fair enough, escolha legítima. Neste postal de 2017 anotei que até a Nestlé deitou a toalha ao chão nos EUA. As empresas que querem liderar via quota de mercado precisam de apontar ao cliente menos exigente, menos conhecedor, precisam que o cliente seja plancton. 

O que é que eu prego às PMEs desde 2006? Volume is Vanity, Profit is Sanity.

Talvez esta organização tenha acesso a fundos que financiem o crescimento necessário para combater no negócio do preço. Os decisores de PMEs que leiam este artigo devem recordar que o seu campeonato tem de ser outro. BTW, não esquecer aquela frase na coluna das citações:

"When something is commoditized, an adjacent market becomes valuable"

"the need to consider the interests of a broader range of stakeholders"

"respondents indicated which stakeholders were explicitly considered during the strategic planning process. We presented them with a list that included five specific groups — customers, employees, partners, communities, investors — and also invited them to name any other stakeholders (such as regulators) relevant to their specific business.

It was surprising that only 11% of respondents indicated that their strategic planning process explicitly considered the perspective of all the identified stakeholder groups. While consideration of customer needs was nearly universal, only 58% of respondents said that the needs of employees were explicitly considered, 35% said that partners were considered, and 27% considered their communities.

...

Restricting your focus solely to the needs of customers is like trying to solve a puzzle with many of the key pieces missing. A strategy development process that overlooks the interests of all relevant stakeholders creates blind spots about the viability of your strategy

...

The goal of strategy has always been to create value for customers and investors in a way that cannot be easily copied and that enables a business to earn an attractive margin. But business leaders now face two additional requirements: the need to consider the interests of a broader range of stakeholders, and the ability to do so under conditions of change rather than stability. 

Our research indicates that the majority of companies should ignore the siren voices urging them to either double down or to pivot. For these companies, the priority is rather to focus their innovation and leadership efforts on reimagining the activities used to deliver value to customers and other stakeholders in order to improve the relevance and distinctiveness of their strategy. Then do it again."

Algo estranho para quem há anos que promove os ecossistemas da procura:

• Que faz o quê no ecossistema (Março de 2017) 
• Olhar para o ecossistema (Outibro de 2017)
• Subir na escala de valor (Março de 2007)

Trechos retirados de "Most Businesses Should Neither ‘Pivot’ nor ‘Double Down’" 

Trabalhar para nichos mundiais

Na conversa de 116 minutos no Whatsapp no passado Sábado a minha irmã "inglesa" falou-me do livro "Why the Germans Do It Better" de John Kampfner. Ontem, comecei a ouvi-lo:

"It may be global in reach, but it is local in its loyalties. It is one of hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises (with turnover of under €50 million and up to 250 workers) in towns across Germany. The Mittelstand employs around three quarters of the country’s workforce and produces more than half the economic output. It is the backbone of the economy and the backbone of society.

...

,,Along with regionalization, family ties and social responsibility, another key aspect of the Mittelstand is its emphasis on specialization. Many of the most successful entrepreneurs find a single product – a particular machine tool or a household appliance. Theirs is a narrow expertise, but they often then end up cornering the global market, focusing relentlessly on acquiring and expanding their customer base, and making sure they stay ahead of the competition.

...

Two statistics stand out. Some 80 per cent of German GDP is derived from family businesses. Two thirds of successful global Mittelstand companies are based in places with fewer than fifty thousand inhabitants.

...

In many other countries in the Western world, industrial and business operations have become very much centralized towards the major cities, whereas in Germany, advanced manufacturing, international footprint and regionalism go together.

Most of all, it is the smaller firms that set Germany apart. The business strategist and author Hermann Simon has coined the term ‘hidden champions’. These are companies, like the ones I’ve mentioned, that devote themselves to a niche. These are success stories of globalization and free trade. The individuals in charge are classic monomaniacs, single-minded and devoted to a single cause or product. They usually shun the limelight."

Falei-lhe disto quando lhe disse qual a receita para as PMEs tugas, nicho com clientes em todo o mundo para ter escala. A velha lição alemã:

• Empresas pequenas concentradas em nichos mundiais (2012)

"the Age of Diverse Markets" (parte IV)

 Parte I, parte II e parte III.

"market mapping—matching customers to the relationships that they should have, not necessarily to the relationships that they initially want.[Moi ici: Quantas empresas não consideram esta segmentação? Lembro-me de ser responsável da Qualidade e Desenvolvimentos numa empresa. A minha equipa fazia desenvolvimentos de receitas para clientes que, depois, iam comprar a matéria-prima à concorrência]

...

In targeting accounts for these relationships, the team found four key factors: (1) the amount of the potential profits at stake; (2) the operating fit; (3) the account’s willingness and ability to partner; and (4) the account’s buyer behavior (that is, relationship versus transactional). The team also saw that it needed to define a small number of alternative relationships—which we call a relationship hierarchy—for accounts for whom full integration did not fit.

...

The decision on who wins big and who gets pushed out is almost always determined by a supplier’s go-to-market capabilities—namely, the ability to choose its customers, to produce more essential customer value through an innovative value footprint, and to create new profits and strategic advantage for the customers.

The overriding management issue is that this change in business eras is creating a critical need for a shift from broad-market targeting to focused-segment—and even customer—selection. In today’s Age of Diverse Markets, “choose your customer” is the most important theme.

...

In the Age of Mass Markets, product prices and cost to serve were relatively uniform from customer to customer. In today’s Age of Diverse Markets, all this has changed: prices and cost to serve vary widely from customer to customer, and even within a customer. Transaction-based profit metrics and analytics allow managers to see exactly where they are making money and where they are losing it—and this detailed understanding of customer, product, and process profitability enables managers to create sharply focused and highly effective initiatives."

 

E a sua empresa, escolhe os clientes? Segmenta as relações com diferentes tipos de clientes?

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

"the Age of Diverse Markets" (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

Os trechos que se seguem são retirados de “Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive” de Jonathan S. Byrnes e ilustram algo que escrevo aqui há muitos anos. Basta recordar a curva de Stobachoff:

"to determine which parts of its business were making or losing money. When they saw the results, they nearly fell off their chairs:

• About 18 percent of their customers, which we call their Profit Peak accounts, accounted for about half of their revenues but produced over 130 percent of their profits.
• About 30 percent of their customers, their large money-losing Profit Drains, accounted for about one-third of their revenues but drained off about 50 percent of the profits earned by the rest of the company
• About half of the company’s customers were Profit Desert customers who accounted for about 20 percent of the revenues and produced less than 10 percent of the profits."

When Edison’s managers saw this, they immediately understood that their price war strategy was a response to the profit-draining customers’ demands, while they were essentially ignoring their critical high-profit customers.”[Moi ici: Demasiado comum. Recordo a espécie de esquema Ponzi]

 E pensa que só acontece aos outros? E como é na sua empresa? Ainda na passada quarta-feira ao telefone tive uma conversa surrealista, parecia um case-study acerca do que são custos afundados. A diferença é que numa empresa o que acontece com ela fica com ela, o mesmo já não se passa quando o decisor é um ministro.

"the Age of Diverse Markets" (parte II)

Parte I.

Na Age of Diverse Markets o monolitismo do mercado desfaz-se, e o uso de médias começa a ser contraproducente dada a variedade de clientes, ofertas, preços e processos.

"In the past, managers needed only aggregate metrics, while today, they need to understand the relationship between revenue and cost for literally every product sold to every customer every time.

...

The biggest problem in business today is that all too many managers are not embracing the Age of Diverse Markets success elements that will enable them to prosper. Instead, they are doubling down on tactical innovations and tuning up old practices from the Age of Mass Markets—usually with diminishing results."

O meu velho exemplo da média do mercado ser laranja, mas ninguém comprar laranja. Metade compra amarelo e metade compra vermelho.

Na  Age of Diverse Markets, e aqui voltamos ao ponto que está na base do nosso trabalho há muitos anos:

"The key to success in the Age of Diverse Markets is choosing your customer. [Moi ici: Quem são os seus clientes-alvo?] This has three imperatives:

• Choose: Define a defensible strategy that your company can dominate, choose the customers who fit, and say no to those who do not.
• Align: Identify and build the capabilities that will enable your company to achieve high sustained profitability with your chosen customers in your target strategic group (that is, the set of firms pursuing the same strategy), and focus your resources to quickly excel in your strategic direction.
• Manage: Develop your organization so your managers can seamlessly coordinate to identify and support your chosen customers, and to meet their diverse and rapidly evolving needs."

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

"the Age of Diverse Markets"

Longe vão os tempos do: qualquer cor desde que seja preto.

Ao longo dos anos tenho escrito sobre Mongo, ou o Estranhistão. A metáfora que uso para ilustrar o abandono do monolitismo do século XX e o advento da variedade e diversidade do século XXI.

"Today, business is transitioning from one major era, the Age of Mass Markets, to another, which we call the Age of Diverse Markets. [Moi ici: Aquilo a que chamo de Mongo, ou o Estranhistão]

...

The Age of Mass Markets, which extended through most of the prior century, was characterized by fast-growing homogeneous markets. [Moi ici: A visão monolítica que a Economia aplica à realidade para a poder matematizar. Depois, chega a modelos e a conclusões sem adesão à realidade e não percebe, e enterra a cabeça na areia]

...

[Moi ici: In the Age of Mass Markets] These companies were characterized by massive economies of scale in nearly every business function (production, distribution, advertising, and so on), which ensured that as they increased their sales, their unit costs dropped, giving them ample profits to invest in getting more sales and in further reducing their costs by increasing the efficiency of their production and distribution systems. Both prices and distribution costs were relatively uniform, so reporting tools based on averages—like aggregate revenues, costs, and gross margins—were sufficient.

The key management imperative was to get big fast. The rules of thumb were that all revenues were good and all costs were bad. [Moi ici: Como não recuar a 2012 e a "Como surgem os Golias e pistas para o aparecimento de Davids". Em Portugal, os mesmos da tríade ainda sonham com empresas grandes. Em Mongo, "Giants invariably descend into suckiness"] Companies segregated their functional departments to individually optimize their revenue-maximizing or cost-minimizing objectives, and they coordinated them at the top through periodic planning sessions and period-end financial reports.

Today’s Age of Diverse Markets, which began its widespread acceleration around 2000, is completely different. Today, there are very few mass markets, while there are more and more diverse markets where product offerings, pricing, and service packages are uniquely configured, if not by individual customer, than at least by highly segmented target markets.

Today, markets are heterogeneous and fragmenting down to the individual customer in many cases. Throughout our economy, pricing is becoming much more varied, both within market segments and even between one customer and the next. In parallel, the cost to serve each customer is becoming increasingly diverse, depending on the customer relationship, product-service mix, and other factors. This change has already overtaken the business-to-consumer (B2C) markets, and it is rapidly transforming the business-to-business (B2B) markets as well."

"In the Age of Mass Markets, products were “king.” To a large extent, companies succeeded by selling the same products to as many customers as possible. In the Age of Diverse Markets, in contrast, customers are “king.” Companies succeed by microtargeting particular customers and tightly specified market segments and providing them with tailored packages of products and related services."

Comecei a reler “Choose Your Customer: How to Compete Against the Digital Giants and Thrive” de Jonathan S. Byrnes. Primeiro, o título. Qual a primeira decisão estratégica? Escolher os clientes-alvo! Recuar ao Verão de 2008 e a Terry Hill e à sua frase "the most important orders are the ones to which a company says 'no'.". Julho de 2007, a primeira vez que usei o marcador "clientes-alvo" aqui no blogue. Apesar de já o fazer em textos anteriores. Segundo, Jonathan S. Byrnes. Um autor que aprecio há mais de 10 anos.

Esse é o busílis!

Consideremos uma PME portuguesa exportadora. Tipicamente está envolvida numa relação B2B com os seus clientes. Consideremos estas diferentes possibilidades:

Em que relações é que a sua empresa mais está envolvida?

• O quadrante 1 não se recomenda por motivos óbvios.
• O quadrante 3 é irrealista, uma PME não pode competir no campeonato da comoditização ponto!
• O quadrante 4 decorre da construção de uma relação de cooperação ao longo dos anos. A dependência mútua decorre da confiança depositada nas capacidades e promessas de cada parte. Por exemplo, entregas rápidas, entregas de pequenas séries, capacidade de desenvolvimento rápido
• O quadrante 3 é talvez o mais desejável, mas também o mais difícil para uma PME. a) Quem são os clientes-alvo? b) O que é que eles procuram e valorizam mesmo? c) O que é que a PME lhes pode oferecer com vantagem sobre a concorrência?

Agora, quantas PMEs têm uma resposta clara, na ponta da língua aquelas perguntas a), b) e c)?

Esse é o busílis!

Imagem adaptada a partir de “What's Your Competitive Advantage?” de Paul Raspin

"customer profitability analysis" (parte II)

 Parte I.

"Unlike measures that gloss over differences among customers or omit cost-to-serve elements, pocket margin gives a company a clear view of how much revenue each transaction generates, how much it costs the company to generate that revenue, and — crucially — when and why those costs are incurred. And because pocket margin is measured for every transaction, metrics based on pocket margin can provide insight into costs and revenues at any desired level of detail, from individual clients all the way up to broad marketplace segments."

Gosto destes títulos e das mensagens que ilustram: What your customers won’t tell you (but pocket margin can):

• You're losing money on me
• “You’re spending too much to serve me”
•  “I’m in the wrong segment”
• “You should be charging me more for …”
• “Sell me _____ now, and I’ll keep coming back for more”

Trechos retirados de "How profitable are your customers … really?"

"customer profitability analysis"

Interessante e talvez sintomático, talvez não seja obra do acaso, mas fruto das circunstâncias que vivemos com a pandemia, com o crescimento acelerado do online (recordar esta epifania), nos últimos tempos tenho encontrado vários artigos que ilustram a importância de pensar nos clientes-alvo, a importância de perceber a curva de Stobachoff e o seu significado:

"No company can afford a flawed understanding of customer profitability, least of all in a recession when the margin for error (as well as profit) is whisper-thin. The flip side is that improvements in this area can be a very effective way of bolstering the bottom line — and companies can often make those improvements with only a modest initial investment. 

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A customer profitability analysis, done right, tells you not just which customers are profitable, but why certain customers are more or less profitable than others. At a strategic level, this information can help guide decisions on everything from growth initiatives to marketplace segmentation. And, tactically, the information can suggest a variety of ways to improve profitability, such as lowering the cost to serve, improving the sales force’s bargaining position, and developing more effective prices and promotions.

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However, many companies that believe they understand customer profitability are actually working with the wrong information. Most use aggregate measures of profitability, typically gross margin, that fail to account for costs that are difficult to measure or that can’t be attributed to individual transactions (such as marketing expenses or distribution costs).

Even when these costs are considered, they’re often computed at an aggregate level using metrics that ignore the nuances of serving particular customers, segments or other populations of interest.

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Pocket margin refers to the amount left in a company’s “pocket” after all of the costs related to a transaction, as well as the cost of goods sold, are subtracted from the list price. These costs can range from the obvious, such as off-invoice discounts and promotions, to the easily overlooked, such as costs associated with freight, warehousing and other activities that may be generally classified as “overhead.” The costs incurred at each point in a transaction are often graphically represented in a “price waterfall,” a bar chart that depicts the impact of each successive cost-to-serve element on the list price."

Trechos retirados de "How profitable are your customers … really?"

"The pandemic sharply accelerated market fragmentation"

Um texto que parece retirado deste blogue:

"Markets change, and business models have to change in parallel. Success depends on constant business model innovation. In order to succeed, you need to get two things right: You have to target a defensible market segment, and you have to create a business model that enables you to win against competitors who are going after your target segment. In developing a high-profit business model to engage your target customers, you have two basic choices: (1) increase your customer value, or (2) lower your cost to serve (or do both).

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In order for your company to succeed in the post-pandemic era, you must do two things well: Select your strategy carefully to target a defensible market segment and tailor your business model to capture and dominate your target market.

The problem is, most companies aren’t ready to compete on these new terms. The pandemic sharply accelerated market fragmentation. This allowed the digital giants, fueled by their market micro-segmentation, to grow quickly, but most companies have not changed their business model to meet these new conditions. Many managers who rose through the ranks in the previous era simply assumed that their age-old, tried-and-true, broad-market business models were still effective. Financial analysts continued to evaluate companies based on sales growth and expense minimization, reinforcing the problem.

In developing a high-profit business model to engage your target customers, you have two basic choices: (1) increase your customer value, or (2) lower your cost to serve (or do both). This is complicated by the need to transition from the previous broad market targeting to the new segment-specific targeting."

Trechos retirados de "How to Create a Winning Post-Pandemic Business Model"