Behind every great product there is a smart company June 23, 2009
Posted by leonghw in Great Products.Tags: great product, outsmart, smart company
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Behind every great product, there is a smart company at work.
But what makes a smart company? Is your organization a smart company?
For some pointers, take a look at these criteria highlighted in
Jim Champy’s book – Outsmart!: How to Do What Your Competitors Can’t
- Companies that outsmart the competition look for dramatic growth, while incumbent businesses are content with incremental growth.
- Companies that outsmart the competition make strategic choices based largely on intuition, whereas incumbent businesses often get bogged down in research.
- Businesses that outsmart their competitors stay focused on what they do best, while incumbent companies are often searching for new ideas and end up losing their sense of purpose in the process.”
- Companies that outsmart competitors focus on how they can better serve customers; incumbent companies focus on their competitors.
- Companies that outsmart the competition accept risk as a normal part of doing business. For incumbents, risk drives decisions and hampers progress.
- Companies that outsmart the competition have a culture that values and freely promotes innovation. Incumbents subject innovation to a cumbersome process.
- Companies that outsmart the competition engage all their people in constructing and executing strategy, whereas, at incumbent organizations, strategy is often an abstraction for most people.”
Your product is too expensive January 20, 2009
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“Your product is simply too expensive!”.
If you’re a salesperson, I bet you’ve heard this from your customers and prospects more than a dozen times before .
Instead of brushing them off as cheapskates, consider this:
1. Is your product’s price expensive compared to the value that it brings?
Normally, a $ 10, 000 piece of software is cheap compared to a $ 100,000 piece of software. But…if that $ 10, 000 piece of software is missing critical features, has a lotta bugs, or simply too hard to use and you end up spending more time trying to get the software to work than actually doing your own work, then it’s expensive.
Comparatively, a $ 1 million software is reasonably priced if it enables you to shorten the time to complete your work, saves or avoid unnecessary costs from rework, improves your chances of getting more revenue, you can say it’s relatively cheap.
a $ 10,000 software that costs you more than it benefits it brings, coupled with high maintenance is expensive.
a $ 1 million software that gives you a return of $ 10 million through cost saving & avoidance and increased revenue is cheap.
The next time somebody says your product is expensive, it could be their way of saying – The Value of your product is too low compared to the Price that you’re asking for.
Now ask yourself these:
1. Is my product expensive?
2. Is there a large gap between the Price and Value of my product?
Your Great Product, nobody buying? January 16, 2009
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Why can’t I get more customers to buy my products? And that’s after spending a gazillion dollars on marketing ads!
Consider this question:
Do you churn out boring products that nobody really wants or care about?
To quote from Seth Godin’s blog post:
“If the marketplace isn’t talking about you, there’s a reason.
If people aren’t discussing your products, your services, your cause, your movement or your career, there’s a reason.
The reason is that you’re boring….”
The next time you’re wondering why nobody is interested or buying your products. Consider his statement.
Great Products starts from Great Visions January 15, 2009
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Great Products are not made by people out to make the most money.
Great Products start out as passionate people fulfilling Great Visions.
A very good example are Honda engines and cars.
What is their Great Vision that drives them? Take a look at what Honda people has to say about their Great Vision.
Are your Products driven by Great Visions?
Great Products. You won’t know it when you use it. January 15, 2009
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Do you “know” when you’re using an iPod?
or whenever you feel like listening to music, you very unconsciously just grab it and plug it in?
Great Products are like that. You won’t know it when you’re using it.
Bad Products on the other hand annoys you. You’re very conscious when using it. And not for a good reason too. Think of the CD wrapper. You could lose a few pounds trying to tear the damned things off.
How about your Products? Are they Good or Bad?
