“Good enough never is. Set your standards so high that even the flaws are considered excellent.”
Debbi Fields
The Idea: We are all guilty of holding on to outdated ideas, allowing fears and limited thinking to capture us. Reinvention and true value creation can only occur when we are courageous enough to let go of the past, while honestly reassessing our current constraints. Today more than ever, the innovation process is an inside job. Your personal psychology (or state) either drives success or hinders growth. It is either your friend or foe. One’s mindset matters more than strategy. The most recent Growth Summit highlighted a number of countercultural growth ideas that are essential to any leader looking to drive growth and build a healthy culture.
New Rule: Think Like an Artist.
Doug Stukenborg, former Target VP of OTC, recently gave a talk on “The New Rules of Value Creation” and shared the following: “Most companies introduce ‘Me-too extensions’ while growth brands ‘reframe’ categories or create them. The biggest blind spot of most companies is that they do not use the feedback of their retail partners, or blindly introduce products that don’t have a home. They overestimate the consumer need and underestimate their product’s differentiation.”
Stukenborg continued: “The other huge blind spot is that they don’t discuss product innovation with the retailer early enough. By thinking you are maintaining confidentiality you are actually increasing the probability of getting the innovation wrong, increasing risk. The very best use rapid prototyping to assess, gather feedback, and iterate their product lines. They don’t expect perfection coming out of the gate, they introduce an idea and course correct along the way.” They think like artists: constantly evolving and always revising.
New Rule: You Can’t Survive Without a Trusted Network.
Research shows that at any given time only three percent of your market is actively buying and more than half are not ready to buy. Furthermore, more than fifty percent of all sales leads are not even legitimate.
In an average business year, one loses fourteen percent of their customers. Is it time to start cold calling or mass marketing to attract new customers? Not a good idea. Only two percent of cold call phone calls end in a sale. We must think hyper-personal, building one-on-one relationships with customers.
Each of us validate buying decisions through our peer group and make decisions based on others opinions. People are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. And sixty-five percent of all new business comes through personal relationships. Do you have a vibrant personal network outside of the four walls of your company? Does your calendar show you value one-on-one relationships?
New Rule: Grit Matters More Than IQ.
When sales people engage prospective customers most agree they not resilient or tenacious. And in today’s complicated buying structures tenacity (and resilience) is a must.
It is not surprising that forty-four percent of sales people give up after one follow-up customer call; the problem is that eighty percent of business relationships are agreed to after five follow-up discussions. And the process is getting more complex. In most mid-size companies seven people or more are involved in the buying process.
Since seventy percent of people buy something to solve a problem, today’s leaders must be adept at uncovering and addressing hidden business problems. They must possess a special blend of tenacity and grit with a critical eye for problem solving: a value creation mindset.
How does your company embrace the new rules?
