A little bit lost in Maryland this summer, my family and I came across Glen Echo Park, a once popular destination that’s seen hard times and is on the way back through the involvement of a dedicated not-for-profit tribe of volunteers.

Most of our visit was spent at the carousel where I was smitten with Smarty Jones. Mmmh, mmh that’s a handsome looking horse – if I’d have been riding I’d have taken Smarty for a trot for sure.

But for the whole time we were at the park, not one child rode Smarty.

What’s wrong?

Why don’t some customers buy your product? If it’s anything like Smarty, it’s great: accessible, goes up and down, has all the features, stands out in a crowd, it’s super-shiny for goodness sakes.

So why does the turkey get a ride whilst good ol’ Smarty puts on a brave face?

It’s the kind of question I get asked all the time. “We have a great product, but there something wrong. What is it?”

Whilst every product has it’s own story, the tale is put together the same way every time — and anyone can do it.

Ask your customers

Act like a consultant and ask your customers. You’ll learn more from what goes wrong than what goes right so make sure to ask non-customers who’ve made an active choice not to buy, and actual-customers who’ve bought but have stopped using. Get out of the building and ask the people who know. Visit, lunch, interview, test, survey — whatever it takes to get the information you need.

Speak to enough customers to see patterns; some will point to lack of priority or urgency, others may point to weaknesses in your product or your proposition. Assume nothing, test everything. When you’re pretty sure you know what’s going on, it’s time to act on what you’ve found.

What are you going to do about it?

There are three layers where you might need to fix things inside the building:

• Message problems are easiest and cheapest to solve. Get together with your sales and marketing team and change your presentations, messaging, communications. Use A/B testing to see what changes work best — especially if you’re web based and have a lot of passing trade.
• Go-to-market problems are more strategic and will probably force a new look at your market, features, distribution, pricing and positioning choices. Everything in this layer is connected so be suspicious of anything that looks like a silver bullet.
• A weak or ill defined core proposition means a fundamental rethink and the discomfort of living with your current product whilst working back through first principles.

After two interviews (my own children, 40% of the carousel kids that day) it was pretty easy to work out Smarty’s problem. Too much competition and a very small market. Strategic problems with no answer in sight means old Jones could be racing to retirement.

What about you? Can you change priorities and raise urgency or do you have to go a little deeper?

Neatly filed under Foundations, Making Promises, Skippiness
Tags: competition, consultants, customers, Glen Echo Park, marketing

This morning, as I came home from the pool a mother and toddler walked up my street. As I folded my bike and fumbled with my keys the pair stopped outside my gate and I overheard the mother ask, “What would you like for your birthday, if you could have anything?”

Her little boy didn’t have to think, and I didn’t have to “overhear” the answer; the whole street is in on the secret.

I’ll come back to his answer in a minute, but for now, this question reminds me of the “King for a Day” question, variations of which often pop up in strategy offsites, particularly for early stage projects.

I was introduced to this idea by a grey haired old managing partner type facilitating a meeting with our team when we couldn’t agree anything about our new product initiative. Coming back from a break, he changed the tack of the meeting by asking each of these questions in turn, making us write down our answers privately before a group discussion at the end.

What would you change?

1. Imagine you’re about to meet a clairvoyant who can actually see the future. You have one question – what do you ask?
2. It is now five years in the future. The project has been fantastically successful. You’re about to be interviewed by a journalist about what you did to make the success. What three things will you tell the journalist made the most difference?
3. Same scenario except the project went badly. Now what do you say?
4. What are the first three actions you will take out of this session?
5. And finally the King for a Day question. You have the power to make any change to the “system” (usually political, market, sociological or technological) that you like. What would you change to make the project more successful?

The whole session — private writing and open discussion — ran a couple of hours, but by the end we’d moved forward, driven issues on to the table, and had a half decent action plan for what to do next.

The King for a Day question itself can seem a bit facile. “If I were King for a day I’d make a law that every customer in our target market has to buy our product,” for example, isn’t very helpful. Or is it? Answers like this may point to a member of the team who isn’t convinced about the product or marketing (which is a big deal in a small team), or they could be highlighting a weakness in the regulatory framework that effectively excludes start-ups so there’s a risk the new product won’t have a fair chance with tenders in its chosen market (which is a very big deal in any team), or something else entirely. Who knows until you bring it into the open?

I’ve used versions of the questions many times since, and king-for-a-day often provides the liveliest and most productive debate. Time spent exposing issues and deciding actions is always good time in my book.

I’m sure the mother on my street wasn’t interested in the strategic concerns of a nebulous product team, but her question served the same “exposing and deciding” purpose as king-for-a-day; cutting to the chase, what’s next?

The prince in my street hollered his answer, “I WANT A GREAT BIG SPANNER.”

Four years old maybe, but this little fella has things to do, and he knows what he needs to get it done.

What about you?

Neatly filed under Innovating, Managing
Tags: consultants, meetings, vision

I’m in the market for a little outside help – which leads to the question, how to choose good people?

Whether looking for lawyers, accountants, developers, consultants, or anyone else, finding the right kind of help can be a challenge.

It seems to me the problem breaks down into three parts:

1. Deciding you actually need help in the first place
   In my world, I look for outside help when I know I want something done but I don’t have the vital ingredients of time, talent or inclination to do it myself.
   Time – like most people I’m pretty busy, there’s plenty of things I’m capable of but just can’t (or shouldn’t) prioritise the time to actually do.
   Talent – which really stands for talent or training. Some things I can’t do, like design or programming, whilst others I’m not qualified to do, like drafting contracts.
   Inclination – some things I could make time for and have the ability to do, but they’re just not high enough on my personal priority list. For example, B might need attention but all my focus is on A.
   There are obvious grey areas around things I could squeeze in, things I can do but am not very good at, and things I feel like doing but am not wholly committed to. Sometimes I have to force myself to be realistic.
   When I do decide to look for help the first port of call is always inside the organisation, there’s often someone looking for a challenge and who has the ingredients. But this article isn’t about them, so who?
2. Choosing the right people
   Two issues come to mind here – the right person to do what? and the right person? – that are often wrapped up together.
   Wouldn’t it be great if every time I needed help I knew exactly what was needed, I’d lay out the brief and ask for quotes. How much for this? Sometimes that even works. More often than not, working out exactly what needs to be done is actually part of what I need help with. What should we do?
   The harder the question, the more I have to rely on trust. Here’s my hit list in no particular order:
   1. A strong track record – can they point to their existing work or previous customers who can vouch for them?
   2. Informative – I like to work with people who know what they’re doing and can explain it in words I understand. This might mean a good web site or well written proposal but it certainly means someone who understands the why of what they do as well as the what.
   3. Attitude – will this person work in the trenches, getting elbow deep in mud if necessary?
   4. Focus – will they stay on point and get the job done, or would they rather be doing something else?
   5. Consistent – this is a catchall. Do they always turn up on time, sweat the small stuff, behave with courtesy and build their reputation in every meeting? In short, will they to continue to behave the way they did when we first met?
3. Getting along
   Having decided to get help, and then chosen the right help, it’s time to get specific and get the work done. Getting specific means deciding exactly what success looks like which normally happens after I’ve chosen my outsider and just before the actual work begins – it’s the final test. After that, it’s all about relationship and management.

The most common trap I’ve experienced is letting the project get off brief – both sides can be responsible.

Also, it’s easy to forget than even the most well paid, highly qualified and supremely confident person is still a person and likes to be told they’re doing a good job every now and again. If they’re not doing a good job, and they’re worth their salt, they like to know that too. In other words, managing an outsider is just like managing an insider.

There are certainly more robust ways of finding the right kind of help which are especially useful when making the most enormous decisions, but on the whole, the question that’s at the back of my mind whenever I’m sitting across the table from any kind of consultant is, “can I trust you?”

Neatly filed under Focus, Managing
Tags: consultants, hiring, Untitled