Lições de Hidden Champions (parte V)

Parte I, parte II, parte III e parte IV.

Mais um conjunto de lições a reter dos "hidden champions":

• focalização em clientes-alvo de um nicho e procurá-los em todo o mundo: globalização
• desenvolvimento de fortes relações com os clientes

"How does a company ascend to world market leadership? Certainly not by staying at home and waiting for customers to call on it. Instead, the hidden champions venture into the world and offer their products wherever their customers are. This process of globalization typically takes generations and requires unending stamina. In the preceding chapter we learned that the hidden champions operate in narrowly defined and therefore relatively small markets. To expand these markets, the hidden champions have chosen globalization as the second pillar of their strategy besides focus. This means that they are narrow in the substance of their business and wide in the regional dimension. The hidden champions' world markets are far larger than their respective home markets.

...

The consequences of narrow market definition are even more pronounced for supernichists and market owners. Even in large countries, niche markets can become tiny. The hidden champions would be doomed to remain small without the possibility of regional expansion. Consequently, globalization is the second pillar of their strategy.

...

The narrow market definition based on application, technology, target group or other criteria is coupled with a wide market definition regarding the regional dimension. These are the two major pillars of the hidden champion strategy: specialization in product and know-how combined with breadth in the regional market coverage, normally on a global scale.

...

The hidden champions have extremely close relationships with their customers, due to the complexity of the products and services they offer. Three-quarters of the companies practice direct sales. Five times as many employees in hidden champion companies have regular contact with customers than in large corporations, leading to the pronounced closeness.

...

Many hidden champions cooperate very closely with their top customers and benefit from them as drivers of performance and as references. The customers' demands are aimed primarily at high performance rather than at low prices. The products and services supplied by the hidden champions offer not only top quality with high-tech content, but also increasingly comprehensive advice and systems solutions. Prices are clearly above market level.

...

The hidden champions' relationships with their customers are close and interactive. The main reason is that, in general, they offer complex product and service programs, often even systems solutions. Such programs cannot be sold off the peg, but require detailed consultation processes."

Trechos retirados de "Hidden Champions of the Twenty-First Century Success Strategies of Unknown World Market Leaders" de Hermann Simon. 

"it’s a chance to make a difference"

Um bom texto, mais um de Seth Godin:

"Interactions with the people who are enrolled and giving you the benefit of the doubt are a form of avocado time. They shouldn’t be optimized for efficiency or even leverage. Instead, it’s a chance to make a difference."

Como não relacionar com Stephen Covey e não só em "Every visit customers have to make ..."

Every visit customers have to make ...

"Efficiency with people is ineffective. With people, fast is slow and slow is fast." - Stephen R. Covey #Efficiency #Effectiveness #7Habits #QOTD pic.twitter.com/0tFMw7eENd

— Stephen R. Covey (@StephenRCovey) February 9, 2021

Sim, segunda metade dos anos 90, aprendi esta lição com este senhor. Influenciou postais como:

• Small is better (Abril de 2010) 
• "aposta noutro mindset" (Julho de 2015)
• "the connection economy is all about being human" (Maio de 2016)

E fez-me criticar esta nota desde a primeira vez que a vi:

"Quem não aposta no "cheaper" e no "cost", aposta na interacção, aposta na co-criação, aposta noutro mindset... eu diria, "Every visit customers have to make are an opportunity for interaction and co-creation"

Nunca esquecer, Golias pode apostar e ganhar com a automação porque está no seu ADN; contudo, David não tem qualquer vantagem em seguir esse caminho, tem muito mais a perder do que os euros que poupa."

Uma parte importante da revolução económica do futuro vai passar por aqui

Neste artigo "Crisis Can Spark Transformation and Renewal" reparei que a empresa europeia que melhor desempenho apresentou desde a crise financeira foi a dinamarquesa Coloplast.

A coloplast é uma velha conhecida deste blogue, "Um antropologista entra num bar... (parte II)" (Fevereiro de 2014). Uma empresa que trabalha em Mongo:

“There is no perfect product, because there is no perfect patient” 

Daí ter feito a associação a esta caricatura num postal de 2019:

Isto permite-me fazer a ponte para um artigo lido este mês, "How Chronic-Disease Patients Are Innovating Together Online":

"The internet gives us virtually unlimited access to each other. That deceptively simple insight is an untapped opportunity in health care. When companies are searching for their next idea, they should look to the online communities of patients who are working to solve their health care challenges on their own.[Moi ici: Empresas ainda embebidas na mentalidade da produção de produtos e que ainda não deram o salto que a Coloplast percebeu que tinha de dar, em vez de vender um produto de acordo com especificações, criar uma interacção, prestar um serviço]
...
Dana has Type 1 diabetes and is a very deep sleeper. Living alone, she worried that her monitor’s alarm was not loud enough to wake her if her blood sugar fell too far in the middle of the night.
...
Dana wanted independence and spoke to device manufacturers, asking them to make louder alarms. Their answer? No. The alarms, they said, are loud enough “for most people.” In shutting down Dana, they ignored the possibility that they could learn from one of their users and improve the product.
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Dana had an idea about how to build a custom alarm if only she could get access to her continuous glucose monitor data. Luckily, she was active on Twitter alongside other people living with diabetes (stage one of peer-to-peer health care).
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A dad named John Costik tweeted that he had managed to free the data from his child’s device. John, an engineer, studied the device’s software and wrote a program that would send the monitoring data to a computer, phone or smartwatch. He shared the instructions online, coached other parents and people with diabetes about how do the modification, and Nightscout was born – an amateur diabetes remote monitoring system created by and for people who use continuous glucose monitors. Now, blood sugar data can be sent, for example, to a parent’s smartwatch so they can monitor their child’s levels while at school, on a field trip, or at a friend’s house. This had been impossible under the rules originally set down by the device companies." [Moi ici: Isto é voltar a uma velha série deste blogue - é meter código nisso]

Uma parte importante da revolução económica do futuro vai passar por aqui. Não será a fazer mais e mais produtos, cada vez mais baratos e produzidos de forma mais eficiente, será a meter código, será a pô-los a desempenhar mais jobs-to-be-done, será a deixar de produzir produtos e a criar condições para gerar outcomes.

As relações como a plataforma mais importante

"By the early 1990s, IBM was losing billions every year, running out of cash and close to bankruptcy.
...
Why was IBM able to survive while so many other IT companies didn’t make it?  I’ve thought a lot about this question.  In my opinion, IBM’s survival was made possible by three major factors: talent and R&D investments; trustful relationships; and wise leadership.
...
Trustful relationships.  Another critical survival factor are the trustful collaborations with clients, business partners, research communities, and other stakeholders that take years to build.[Moi ici: O papel de um ecossistema]
...
“From the beginning, as a maker of complex machines IBM had no choice but to explain its products to its customers and thus to develop a strong understanding of their business requirements.  From that followed close relationships between customers and supplier.  Over time these relationships became IBM’s most important platform - and the main reason for its longevity.”
...
Wise leadership.  In April of 1993 Lou Gerstner became IBM Chairman and CEO, the first outsider appointed to the position.  This was, in my opinion, the third major factor in IBM’s survival.
...
He imbued the IBM workforce with a strong sense of urgency, prodding it to address the serious problems the company faced.  He surrounded himself with executives who knew the company well and understood what needed to be done.
...
Early in his tenure he was faced with a few critical decisions.  IBM’s previous leadership had been working on a plan to break up the company into a loose federation of thirteen so-called baby blues.  But, after talking to a number of IBM’s key customer, Gerstner reversed the decision. Customers told him that IBM was much more valuable as an integrated company that could help them solve complex problems and build industry solutions than as a provider of piece parts or components."

Trechos retirados de "Getting Through Highly Uncertain Times - Some Lessons Learned"

Uma transformação

"Two decades ago, we sought knowledge by laboriously searching in bulky paper-based encyclopedias or dusty journals in libraries; today we have knowledge on-line at our fingertips at the tap of an app.
.
Two decades ago, a car was a metal machine with a couple of electric controls: today, a car is a multifunctional entertainment center on wheels, with which we can even hold conversations.
.
Two decades ago, a telephone was a mechanical contraption attached by wire to a physical system: now, a telephone is a handheld multifunction device that connects us to the world and serves an infinite array of complex purposes.
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Two decades ago, an office was a physical building that contained people and machines: now, an office is a software network with people scattered around the planet interacting with it."

E em que medida é que as ofertas da sua empresa se transformaram? Em que medida deixaram de vender substantivos e passaram a vender resultados na vida dos clientes?


Trecho retirado de "How Software Developers Sparked Management Transformation"

"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."

Vendas, custos e riscos

Um trecho interessante para os empresários pensarem:

"Clients pay for two things in the main, either increasing revenue or reducing costs. [Moi ici: Faz logo lembrar "The Three Rules", mas o ponto que quero sublinhar é o que vem a seguir] But they will also pay, in a very direct way, for trust and for the perception of reduced risk. One of the things that allows you to increase your rates over time is think of it that there is a tremendous fear in every client’s mind, when they get into a new technology project (or any kind of project really), that the project is just going to totally blow up and they will get no value out of it. So they discount the rate that they are paying to you, the maximum rate they think they can afford to pay you, by the chance of the project totally blowing up."[Moi ici: Faz logo lembrar a frase "no one was ever fired for buying ibm"]

A ideia do risco tem duas vertentes:

• Ajuda os que estão estabelecidos e têm uma reputação no mercado
• Prejudica os novos que querem entrar num mercado: os estudos todos dizem que o produto é melhor, mas ... são estudos, não a vida real. E se corre mal? Recordar:

Recomendo a audição ou a leitura da fonte do trecho lá de cima "Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie On Why Your Customers Would Be Happier If You Charged More" (muito me ri ao ouvir o podcast enquanto conduzia debaixo de chuva à noite). Por exemplo:

"“How do I download the Googles to my printer?”
Ramit:  What? That’s a reasonable ‑‑ [laughs] to your printer?
.
Patrick:  Yeah.
.
Ramit:  [laughs] You had me until you said printer. OK, that is ridiculous.
.
Patrick:  My users occupy a place of love in my heart. So I say this from a position of love, and not to make fun of anyone, but rather to tell you that real people really think like this: I’ve had to convince people that there are not two physically distinct Internets entitled “the blue Googles” and the “the green Googles.”  This means they can use their login on my website regardless of whether they’re on the blue Googles or the green Googles.  Believe it or not, any site that you can reach from the blue Googles is available on the green Googles as well.
.
(Wondering how someone would come to this misconception?  A particular customer used the Internet using IE opening to MSN at school and IE opening to Google at home.  They did not realize that Microsoft and Google were not the same company.  They interpreted this as “the blue Googles” and the “green Googles”, because the Googles is the Internet to them.  When they typed stuff into the two different boxes on the two different Googles, different results came out.  Their natural inclination for, “Why does this strange, devil box work in different ways?” was, “Oh, they must be two different devil boxes.”)"

 À parte as piadas o artigo deixa várias provocações relacionadas com a parte do título "Your Customers Would Be Happier If You Charged More"

A supporting role

"Problems are stories — it’s a dull tale that has no conflict to resolve. The customer on the other side of that table is the protagonist in their own adventure. We’ve selected them as a persona that might be interested in casting us as their hero (or even in a supporting role that lets them be the hero of their own story)."

É isto, voltar a Luke e a Yoda: "Parte III - O cliente é que é o Luke"

Trecho retirado de "What a Journalist Can Teach Lean Startups about Customer Interviews"

"There is a shift from “commoditization” to “personalization”

"Experience has emerged as the new basis for exchange. Schmitt (1999, p. 53) opined that “companies have moved away from traditional “features-and-benefits” marketing towards creating experiences for their customers”.
...
This approach is based on the foundation that a consumer lives by consuming experiences offered by products, services, events or a series of multisensory interactions between customers and organizations at every touchpoint in pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase situations.
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There is a shift from “commoditization” to “personalization” – personalized co-created consumption experiences. The customer value is derived during the entire consumption process as “internal and subjective responses” through co-creation experiences. The organizations act as resource integrators to facilitate experience creation by providing experience environment.
...
Interaction is central to experience creation. ... consumer responses (approach or avoidance) are determined by interaction between stimulus (organizational or environmental) and organism (consumers – emotional state of pleasure, arousal and dominance). Holbrook and Hirschman brought experiential perspective and described consumption experience as “a phenomenon directed towards the pursuit of fantasies, feelings, and fun”. They further commented that “the consumer behaviour is the fascinating and endlessly complex result of a multifaceted interaction between organism and environment”. Addressing the dimensions of customer value, Holbrook explained that “Value is an interactive relativistic preference experience”. ...  “All experiences are ‘consumption experiences’ and that these consumption experiences constitute most of what we do during our waking and even our non-waking lives”
...
“The traditional system is become obsolete [...] In the emergent economy, competition will centre on personalized co-creation experiences resulting in value that is truly unique to each individual”. They emphasized on customer value derived from purposeful and meaningful personalized interaction between customer and organization. ... “The customer is always a co-creator of value. Value creation is interactional” and “Value is always uniquely and phenomenologically determined by the beneficiary. Value is idiosyncratic, experiential, contextual and meaning laden”. ... “Commercial experiences need to be considered as a product offering to avoid commoditization and price competition”.

Trechos retirados de "Customer experience – a review and research agenda", Journal of Service Theory and Practice, Vol. 27 Issue: 3, pp.642-662, de Rajnish Jain, Jayesh Aagja, Shilpa Bagdare, (2017)

Countering commoditization begins with ... (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

O quadrante "Core" é o ponto de partida para muitos dos desafios em que acompanho as PMEs. 

"Core This quadrant, low on both value-adding dimensions, is a starting point where the offer lacks sufficient differentiation to avoid becoming a commodity. Customers do not perceive compelling differences between the firm and its rivals in their value propositions. What is offered is not sufficiently adapted to the specific requirements of individual customers or their segments, nor does it have an added ‘bundled’ value besides the core product. Under this scenario the firm is obliged to look beyond its core for the missing differentiation that comes with added value."

As hipóteses são:

"Targeted Extension This quadrant represents a strategy that aims to add value by extending its core offer to more closely meet the special and possibly unique needs of the market segments or even the individual accounts it serves.
...
System Development Firms choosing to compete in this quadrant develop a package of products and services that offer the synergistic benefits of a ‘system’.
...
Solutions Innovation What happens when the firm’s offer consists of a full set of bundled products and services that are specifically targeted at certain customer segments or individual accounts?"

A figura que se segue ilustra com o exemplo da SKF:

 Interessante como o quadrante das Total solutions = Solutions Innovation é um exemplo perfeito da máxima "Privilegiar os inputs sobre os outputs". Não vendem rolamentos, vendem os resultados que os clientes procuram. Os rolamentos foram um instrumento inicial para o arranque da conversa.

Privilegiar os inputs sobre os outputs (parte XIII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII, parte VIII, parte IX, parte X, parte XI e parte XII. 

"for many of today’s industrial vendors the ability to create value is less than matched by the power to capture it, because in commoditized markets the customer is the driver in an unbalanced distribution of bargaining power. The consequences for suppliers can be serious: declining prices and margins, inferior returns on investment, and the risk of falling into a ‘commodity trap’ where the pressure on profitability leads to reduced investment in product (or service) innovation, which in turn leads to further loss of differentiation and even greater pressure on prices and margins. Few marketers can escape this vicious cycle with their shirts on.
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Can industrial companies counter commoditization and avoid falling victim to their ever more powerful, hard-bargaining customers?.
The answer for a growing number of companies is an affirmative one. These firms have learned that while core product advantages erode and pressure on prices never lets up, they can still do profitable business by pursuing value-added strategies including aligning themselves with key customers. Put differently, these companies have discovered profitable opportunities in stretching beyond their core products by offering customers compellingly differentiated values. They have thus successfully countered commoditization.
...
Consider the following examples.

• SKF, the world’s largest ball-bearing manufacturer, ... to maintain their production machinery, reduce or eliminate downtime and maximize plant yield.

• ...

• Raisio Chemicals, a major supplier of chemical compounds ... developing new products, upgrading paper quality and improving printability. The company offers its important customers access to its technical staff and facilities, including a unique pilot coating machine and a newly built printing plant, for testing and experimentation."

Dois exemplos da concentração nos inputs e não nos outputs.

Trechos retirados de "3 Countering Commoditization: Value-added Strategies and Aligning with Customers" de Kamran Kashani

To break through marketing clutter

"To break through marketing clutter, companies need to understand customer processes and the processes of their customer’s customer.
...
Value chain marketing requires marketers to develop an enhanced understanding of their industry, including activity at successive steps throughout the value chain, and to apply marketing tools to maximize effectiveness of the marketing programme up and down the value chain. New analytic tools to understand the industry must be deployed, and new tools to maximize marketing effectiveness must be developed. Value chain marketing challenges marketers to step into a broader framework where the dividing line between business strategy and market development is sometimes blurred.
...
The basic building block for understanding any industry is the macro business system. It includes all industry participants, connected in a successive chain of value added, from raw material production to OEM customers, wholesalers, retailers, retail customers and in some cases recycling. As in macroeconomics, where macro denotes the behaviour of the economy as a whole, the term ‘macro business system’ applies to an entire industry and all players upstream and downstream from a given competitor.
...
No industry business system is likely to resemble another.
...
Upstream component and material suppliers
...
Downstream manufacturers and processors
...
Secondary users or OEMs
...
Wholesalers
...
Retailers
...
Consumers and end users
...
Recyclers"

Trechos retirados de "Value Chain Marketing" de Jean-Pierre Jeannet

"Customers expect your attention to be on them"

Um excelente texto que recomendo para reflexão, sobretudo para os adeptos de Dick Dastardly, "The New Retail: Sell to Me in a Me2B World":

"Jeff Bezos said, “If we can keep our competitors focused on us while we stay focused on the customer, ultimately we´ll turn out all right.”
.
Many retailers today seem to do exactly this and try to compete with Amazon.com. It's not rare that I have conversations with retailers about implementing strategies to compete with, or even leapfrog, Amazon. I usually provocatively ask the question, “which part of Amazon would you aim to overtake?”
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Focusing on competing with Amazon isn't a winning strategy. Retailers, instead, need to laser-focus on their customers and not primarily on the competition.
...
Consumers say, “Treat me like a person, not as a sales opportunity. Don´t just sell products. Sell to me!” [Moi ici: Pensar nos inputs do cliente e não nos outputs]
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Consumers are willing to pay more for positive experiences. Making individual consumers happy will be the ultimate driver for loyalty and differentiation. However, companies must first be able to see their own business through the eyes of the customer,
...
How you sell what you sell is important! Customers expect your attention to be on them, not your competitors. It's all about more empathy, more fun and less friction, which results in happy customers for life."

"selling projects rather than products"

Outro texto delicioso e em sintonia com Mongo, "Selling Products Is Good. Selling Projects Can Be Even Better":

"In the beginning companies sold products. And then they sold services. In recent years, the fashionable suggestion has been that companies sell experiences and solutions, solving the needs and aspirations of customers.
.
Companies, indeed, do all of these things. But increasingly, what companies sell are projects. To understand the difference, think of an athletic shoe company, such as Nike or Adidas. A focus on products means a focus on selling running shoes. A focus on experiences might mean they sell you a membership to a local running club. A focus on solutions might mean they figure out how to help you reach your goal weight. While these clearly offer more value than simply selling you a pair of shoes, they also have limitations. Selling products limits the revenues you can make from clients: Unless you are innovating and continually updating your product offering, customer attrition tends to be high, and incentivizing repurchases can be hard. Selling experiences provides intangible benefits that are hard to quantify and measure, often focusing on meeting the needs of one single customer, preventing any mass production. Selling solutions became popular in the early 2000s when customers didn’t know how to solve their problems. But today, in the internet age, people can do their own research and define the solutions for themselves.
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A focus on selling projects would mean helping someone do something more specific, such as running the Boston Marathon.
...
The project would have a clear goal (finish the marathon) and a clear start and end date.
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And that is just one type of project. More so than products, the possibilities with projects are endless. [Moi ici: Como não recordar - as pessoas e as empresas não compram o que compram, mas o que vão conseguir, processando o que compraram]
...
Soon after launch, products are copied by the competition, which means they must be priced more cheaply. Soon, they become a commodity. This removes any opportunity for steady, high margins over the long term. Philips has experienced this even with its high-end health care products. Shifting its emphasis to selling projects rather than products was a strategic response to this problem.
.
For example, Philips sells high-tech medical devices. In the past it sold them simply as products (and it still does). But now Philips seeks out the projects in which its products will be used. If a new health care center is being considered, Philips will seek to become a partner from the very beginning of the project, including the running and the maintenance of the new center."

Há tempos a trabalhar num projecto de reflexão estratégica para exactamente fazer esta transição de empresa de produtos para empresa de projectos, fui surpreendido no inicio pelo pedido para fazer uma análise Value Stream Mapping ao seu ciclo produtivo. Entretanto, com o andar do projecto passei a mensagem que se quisessem aplicar a análise Value Stream Mapping o fizessem à utilização do produto durante o ciclo de vida do utilizador final, como naquele "running and the maintenance of the new center".

Continua.

BTW, confesso que me estou a tornar num fan de Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez.

O actor, o seu problema e o valor (parte III)

Parte I e Parte II.

"For the buyer and seller an exchange contains several sources of potential benefits and costs:
• The sales contract or agreement describes the performance requirements for each party and is therefore a source of benefits and costs for each side. We will refer to them as the benefits and costs of the contract.
• The negotiation and carrying out of a transaction is not without costs. We refer to these as transaction costs.
...
• A transaction is not carried out in isolation from other transactions and processes in the environment. Almost every transaction has external effects of one sort or another. Hence we distinguish between the benefits and cost that arise directly from the exchange, and side effects that only become apparent in other exchanges. We refer to these side effects as side benefits and side costs from the perspective of the parties involved in the focal exchange.
...

The Buyer’s PerspectiveIf a product or service is provided as contractually specified, the buyer receives the contract benefits. These are the benefits the product provided contribute to solving a particular problem ... The meaning of the term “Product” in this context has to be interpreted in the broadest sense as a means of producing value, of solving problems: it comprises all the elements defined in the agreement including hardware, software, services, and ownership and usage rights. From the buyer’s perspective, a product is not a physical object but a means of solving a problem, with the associated perceived benefits. It is not the machine that constitutes the product but the availability of manufacturing capacity; the consulting process is not the product but the resulting ability of the buyer to deal with a problem in a better way.
...
The potential transaction benefits for a buyer arise independent of the emergence of an agreement during the buying process. One example is the know-how the buyer may gain from the seller as a result of their interactions, which may assist the buyer in later use of the product. Another is the positive experience the buyer has during the exchange process, from their own activities or those of the seller. The seller’s efforts to facilitate the buyer’s decision making, such as consulting advice, comparisons of alternatives, advertising, inspection tours, and test operations are yet another potential source of benefits that can increase the buyer’s trust in the seller and hence lower its transaction costs."

Trechos retirados de "The Market Process" de Wulff Plinke e Ian Wilkinson, capítulo incluído no livro "Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Marketing - Mastering Business Markets" editado por Michael Kleinaltenkamp, Wulff Plinke, Ian Wilkinson e Ingmar Geiger

O actor, o seu problema e o valor (parte II)

Parte I.

A motivação de um potencial cliente por uma interacção será tanto mais forte quanto mais forte for a pressão para resolver o seu problema. Três factores podem afectar essa pressão:

"The consequence of success or failureThe pressure to solve a problem will vary according to the perceived importance of fulfilling a task. If the execution of a task promises significant contributions to goal achievement, the exchange partner will try harder to solve the problem. ... The more important are the anticipated consequences of failing to solve the problem, the greater is the pressure for solution.
...
Complexity of the task and the availability of means of solution
The more complex the task is perceived to be, the greater the pressure and effort required to find a solution.
...
Limits on the resources available, financial or human, also increase the difficulty and pressure involved in finding a problem solution. This is because compromises have to be made with respect to budgets or the quality of the problem solution.
...
Time pressure
The shorter the time available to solve a problem, the greater the pressure to find a solution. Time pressure may mean some options are not available, as when the time to submit a tender expires due to unexpected technical problems in tender preparation, or when costs will increase significantly if overtime rates have to be paid to extend working hour to complete a job on time."

Recentemente num projecto balanced scorecard onde a estratégia passa por subir na escala de valor trabalhando a interacção com um decisor vários níveis acima do cliente no ecossistema da procura, apareceu um tema como relevante para cativar esse decisor: "Prazos curtos".

O tema ainda não está resolvido, mas deixa-me cheio de dúvidas... associo prazos curtos a produtos padronizados. Produtos padronizados são um negócio de preço, prazos curtos não são compatíveis com tempo para interagir e criar algo novo. Também podemos estar a falar de "prazos curtos" não no sentido literal, mas curto no sentido de rapidez na criação de algo novo.

Trechos retirados de "The Market Process" de Wulff Plinke e Ian Wilkinson, capítulo incluído no livro "Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Marketing - Mastering Business Markets" editado por Michael Kleinaltenkamp, Wulff Plinke, Ian Wilkinson e Ingmar Geiger

Fricção positiva e negativa

"Negative Friction.
Friction is the idea that you are difficult to business with, that you make it difficult to transact, that more is required than should be necessary, and that the experience isn’t good. The worse your experience, the less likely you are to continue to buy from companies that create enough friction to drive you to seek other options.
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Positive Friction.
In a super-relational, strategic relationship where human beings need to work closely to solve problems and generate results together, friction is positive. Meetings are friction, which is why much is written about the amount of time wasted in poor meetings. Perhaps it because of the Digital Age in which we find ourselves, little is written about how face-to-face meetings and a physical presence creates positive friction, the deepening of relationships and the engendering of trust.[Moi ici: Como não recordar "Every visit customers have to make is an opportunity for interaction and co-creation"]
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Conversations to understand what clients need, especially the conversations that include multiple stakeholders with different or competing perspectives, are another form of friction. The friction created by competing perspectives and working through to some reasonable consensus is the benefit of that friction.
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Would it be easier to send a survey to see how you are doing? Would an email accomplish the same goal without interrupting your busy client? While these choices might end a bit of friction, the positive friction that comes from a phone call is that it proves caring and high touch. The lower friction suggests transaction.
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It is a mistake to try to reduce friction when it is positive, just as it is a mistake not to remove it when it is negative."

 Ainda na semana passada preparei esta imagem para documentar estes dois tipos de fricção:

Trechos retirados de "Negative Friction and Positive Friction"

Privilegiar os inputs sobre os outputs (parte XII)

Parte I, parte II, parte III, parte IV, parte V, parte VI, parte VII, parte VIII, parte IX, parte X e parte XI.

Recordar 

"Privilegiar os inputs sobre os outputs nada mais nada menos do que aplicar uma regra fundamental do Design Thinking.
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Começar pelo que o cliente, ou o consumidor, ou o prescritor (começar por um actor do ecossistema) precisa ou quer fazer. Quais as suas motivações, que problema é que está a tentar resolver.[Moi ici: Recordar sobretudo a parte IX]
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A Empatia é a chave. Não é acerca da nossa empresa. Precisamos da capacidade de perceber e partilhar os sentimentos de outros"

E considerar "How Not to Fail at Retail":

"Think About: Input Before Output
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We all know how online shopping works: a customer can search for products based on various criteria. But an online store isn’t very good at asking probing questions to find out what a consumer really cares about.
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As Frank asked me questions about what I wanted to accomplish with this new amplifier, he gathered key information before suggesting what the right solution would be. He put himself in a position to make recommendations to me that guitarcenter.com would never be able to make. And he helped me learn more about what was really important to me.
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Could I have bought the amp on guitarcenter.com? Sure. But now that Frank has acted like a trusted advisor and helped me with my decision making, I’m much less likely to close the deal online. And truthfully, the only place I even considered making the purchase was in-person, with Frank.
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As an in-store salesperson learns about a consumer’s needs and interests, they can do something that an online retailer can do in only the most rudimentary fashion: frame the product’s story in terms of the particular benefits to this individual customer.
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An online product listing can tell of generic benefits, such as “gets your teeth their whitest” or “saves you $432 per year in energy costs.” An in-person retail experience can do so much more.
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Brick and mortar retailers have lost many of the advantages they once had, including providing better access to products and the convenience of “location, location, location.” But in-person retailers still have the advantage of proximate, meaningful human contact to that allows them to better listen to customers, collaborate with them and personalize their purchase experience."

"This wide gap deserves top management attention"

Segue-se um relato que não anda longe do que encontro quando trabalho com PMEs. Dirigentes que acreditam que o seu negócio é o que produzem, mas que depois dizem que a sua vantagem competitiva nada tem a ver com o que produzem, e tudo a ver com a interacção.

"Over the past twenty years, I have asked thousands of managers around the world Levitt’s question: “What business are you in”? And I have followed it up with another: “Why do your customers buy from you rather than from your competitors?” In answer to the first question, the responses from managers in a wide variety of industries, from extraction, to pipelines, window frames, software, and banking, almost invariably still describe the product the company sells or the production facilities. I am always bewildered at how rarely the customer or the benefits the customers buys, enter the description. [Moi ici: Recordar a série "Privilegiar os inputs sobre os outputs (parte XI)", particularmente a parte IX. Recordar também "Most people tend to describe what they do rather than the value they bring"] To many managers, the product is the business, just as in Levitt’s era. Firms continue to spend inordinate amounts of time, effort, and resources on their products. In fact, businesses are structured around their products: they have product divisions and product managers, profitability is measured by product (not by customer), planning meetings and budgets are product-based, and the managers’ hopes and aspirations are pinned on product innovation and the new product pipeline. Building better products, conventional wisdom holds, is their pathway to a better, less price-competitive future.
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My follow-up question aims to uncover what managers see as their particular competitive advantage, not just how they see their business – and it does one other thing: it reveals a puzzling gap between their product obsession and their customers’ behavior. So why do they think their customers buy from them rather than from their competitors? The responses consist of reasons such as “They trust us,” “Our reliability of supply and delivery,” “Our service,” “We are knowledgeable about their business,” “Our experience with other such customers,” “We make it seamless,” “They see us as unique,” “We’re in their consideration set,” and so on.
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Rarely is a better product mentioned, and seldom is a lower price seen as the reason customers buy from us. In other words, the “reasons customers buy from us” reside almost entirely in the interactions that take place in the marketplace: trust, reliability of supply, service, knowledge, and experience cannot be made in a factory, nor packaged and sold off the shelf. These are downstream sources of value. They have their origins in specific activities, processes, and systems the firm employs to reduce the customers’ risks and transaction costs.
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This wide gap between why customers buy from us (downstream reasons), and where we are spending most of our effort and resources (upstream) deserves top management attention – it can both increase efficiency by re-allocating effort to where it matters, and can build advantage by spending resources on activities that customers value and are willing to pay for."

Trecho retirado de "Why Do Your Customers Buy From You?"