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

When I went to see Jack Welch speak on management, I knew what I’d be getting – candour, leadership, persistence, values – no need to explain, no sales pitch required. You had me at the name.

When I’m looking for a coffee and comfort in an unfamiliar town, finding a Starbucks makes me smile.

A brand that I know, like and trust is a short cut to the top of my short list – very often, it’s a shortlist of one. Nothing new there, brands are important, let’s move on.

If brands are important, how do I get one? How to build a reputation people trust?

Make a promise people care about – or, put another way, build a fantastic product that people want. I know that sounds so obvious that it’s hardly worth the pixels it’s displayed upon but a) there’s loads of rubbish out there, and b) there’s plenty of products, particularly technology products, that nobody wants or cares about.

Tell them you exist, in a language they understand – or, put another way, talk like you care about the customer rather than about yourself. The language you use to talk about your thing internally may be the same language that your customer uses externally, but it’s probably not. Use customer language, not marketing/management/leading/essential speak.

Deliver, deliver, deliver – or, put another way, fulfil your promises. We buy from people we trust, prove you deserve it and we’ll buy again and tell our friends.

Reputations are built around happy customers. Customers are happy when we do what we say we’re going to do, and we do it brilliantly.

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises, Making Promises, Skippiness
Tags: brand, marketing, product, reputation

Working in the business to business world I always feel a little bit uncomfortable when people talk about brand. As I’ve said, brand is a (marketing whodoo) word for reputation. Most of us should forget all the clever nonsense of branding and commit to the steady work of building a great reputation.

How to do it? The way you’ve always done it. Everything you say and everything you do – especially, everything you do. Nobody can dispute the power of words, but there’s really no choice between conflicting words and actions. What you do is the give away for who you are.

To build a great reputation – do great things consistently, keep your promises and make sure your feet, wallet and mouth travel together.

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises
Tags: brand, marketing, reputation

I had two conversations in pretty quick succession that pointed towards the extremes of service we face every day.

Both talking about (different) new products. The first, a “name” advertising guy, said,

“It’s possible to cover up a bad product with good advertising.”

The second, a middle manager at one of the world’s biggest computer companies, said,

“We need to make sure the back end is bomb proof before we get the sales force excited.”

Which product would you rather buy?

I’m not suggesting that the advertising guy was recommending what he was saying, or even liking it. He wasn’t. But the fact that he had this answer down pat shows that too few companies take the approach of the computer guy.

Faced with an opportunity to make money, which option do you take? The quick don’t-ask-difficult-questions-how-many-can-we-shift approach or the slower hold-on,-let’s-make-sure-we-do-this-right approach.

Where’s the money?

A certain big computer company might say, “go slow, add a few steps, make sure the back end is bomb proof.”

I’d say, “skip.”

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises, Making Promises, Skippiness
Tags: advertising, marketing

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about names recently. Working in a team, we’ve come up with a bunch of alternatives and pretty much settled on one. On the way through though, someone asked, “how do we know when we’re ready?”

For that matter, how do you know when anything is ready? The name, the new product, the presentation, the logo, the promising member of staff being considered for promotion. Are they ready?

“When can you have the report ready?” says the client.
“Er. When do you need it?” says the consultant.

After a point, state-of-readiness is really state-of-polish. Could something or someone be better? Yes. Does it matter? That depends on the answer to another question:

• Will it do what you promised?

Almost everything could be better, but if it does the job you need it to do, and in the way that it should, then it’s time to ship.

No name is perfect but now we have one that works, it’s time to move on.

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises, Making Promises
Tags: idenity, marketing, naming