Invasion

Assuming you have different kingdoms surrounding your country and you want to invade some territory, how do you choose the kingdom.

1. Area which can benefit you
2. Area with least resistance

Least resistance need not necessarily from small or weak player, it could be from large player who has become weak. Choose the right area before invasion, it will make your progress easy.

Well, its not so easy, what if all areas are of strong resistance and you are about to lose your area from invasion!

1. Defend what you have
2. Gain strength
3. Invade the weak among the strong

Same holds good in Marketing, at times we forget the basics and we remind ourselves on that..

A Donkey is a donkey is a donkey

How many times you relaunch,  rebrand, renovate, recycle, redesign, once perceived as donkey, it will remain so for ever. Nano will go the same way, however painful it is, Nano Twist earlier, Nano Electric tomorrow.

All of us have so many donkeys, accept the same as donkey, use it as donkey or dump the donkey. Do not try to make it a horse, it ll never be..

Flipped Kart

There are various theories told about declining sales & valuation of Flipkart but one reason I could see is that they failed to enable the customers to choose the right products. In e commerce sites, the biggest challenge is to ensure quality & pricing of products where third party is producing/selling the products. Amazon overcome this challenge by forcing the customers to rate all the products they bought. It puts pressure on the seller to ensure quality & also it helps the customers to choose the right products based on customer feedback.

The last time I bought items in Flipkart is when I returned 3 of the 5 items I ordered and I am happy with all the products that I bought in Amazon based on customer rating. E commerce is here to stay, will become big and will create the organisation of the future, Flipkart need to just look for ways to serve the customers better, rest all just noise which they can ignore..

Studipidy of Market share

How stupid are we in chasing market share.. Market share should be one of the measure of performance rather it has become the only measure of performance. Market share is becoming the basis for strategy rather it should be value creation for customers or shareholders. We should find constructive ways of achieving the desired market volume rather than working out various permutation & combinations to gain market share. 

So you wanna find a easy way to beat the competition, lay them a trap of market share growth, they will fall prey!  

Let it go!

The famous phrase of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith "Let it go!" has major significance in marketing, How long we stick to some products rather than letting it go..

There are very few products in Automobile Industry in India, which failed in the initial launch and then went on to become a successful product in relaunch. There could be many reasons and one could be the stigma attached to a failed product where brand image plays a major role. But when 9 out of 10 products go this way why people stick to their failed products rather than letting it go! There could be huge loss associated with it, it may not be possible for a sudden exit but one should be prepared for a phased exit otherwise the opportunity loss of not letting it go will be on the higher side.

There are lot of products which are nowhere near that of competition and still try to fix the issues by leaps and bounds and by the time they fix those issues the competition is way ahead and we settle down for a meager market share. If that is what you are looking for, fair enough, but if it is not, Let it go!..

   

Maladies of Organisation 2

In the "Lack of Awareness" in Organisation, the biggest problem is Understating the needs of the customer.. The problem is much bigger than anyone can imagine..

The Longer the time to make a product, the larger the sale of the product, the bigger the issue is.. We don't know what's the customer requirement so we make 10 models with 3 varieties with 3 combinations and then struggle with 90 products inventory and their complexity and worse still not satisfying the exact needs of the customer..

This is more evident but why do companies struggle.. In lot of Organisation, people with good execution capability grow fast until they reach the Top management levels and most of them lack this expertise. One more reason is not getting the right team for the product function, even if it is, probably they get lost.. We need a more intuitive team for this role who not just go by the data they analyse but also understand the nuances of the customer requirement and they should stand above all, including the so called strong sales guys in the organisation.. Understand why Apple Inc Chief Design officer Jonathan Ive directly reported to Steve Jobs and was kept above all..

The product team need to remember these key things..

1. Do we know where & how to get the effective information on customer requirement

2. Where  the market goes and what it is now

3. Doing what is right for the customer rather than what does customer want. Customers are not aware what is good for them until they experience, sometimes even after experiencing.. what is right will pay off in long run if properly communicated to the market.. Snacks are bad but zero trans fat snack is comparatively better for the customer even with a small compromise on the taste. The dilemma is much stronger in situations like safety of an Automobile Vs fuel efficiency, Quality of the product Vs pricing.

4. What are the most valuable functions of a product in your customer segment? Is it the fuel efficiency or Driving comfort of a Truck, Versatility of a Tractor or Application specific, Image of a car brand or pricing..

5. Listen. Listen to your employees, partners, channels, customers, competition.

6. Organisation capability, Aspirations should match with the current capability of the Organisation, one cannot produce a quality product if there are inherent weakness in R&D and Quality functions, so prepare yourself for trial and error launch, until the capability issues are fixed.

Today lot of companies waste their time in bringing the wrong product, then pushing their sales team, worst increase the sales team size, not satisfying the customers then give deep discounts for selling that product, absolute waste of resources and time..

The need of the hour is that there should be simple models which can capture the needs of the customer to a greater degree of accuracy and also the adoption of the same across Organisations, It will benefit the customers, will raise the bar for the competition and bring in greater revolution in satisfying the customer needs..