A market is a job and a job executor. This is all we need to know to understand the answer to the question, “Who is the customer?” To better explore this question – let’s begin with this: The goal of innovation is to help a customer to accomplish a job perfectly. Question: Who gets to say what “perfect” is? Answer: The customer (of course). Question: Who is the customer? Answer: The person executing the job. We innovate for the person…
Taking time to understand customer needs reduces product development time. Ever heard the joke about the optimistic pilot? Before the days of computers, when pilots had to use more elementary tools, a particularly optimistic pilot was flying from New York to Bermuda. To his horror, he noticed that the compass needle seemed to be stuck. Being conscientious, he felt that he should alert his passengers. “Good afternoon. I’m afraid I must inform you that we’re having some instrument problems and…
“I never lose. Either I win or I learn.” Unknown Why did your customer buy your product – or your competitors? This basic tactic is used by less than 20% of companies. (http://pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/the-eight-rules-of-successful-winloss-analysis). Why is this? This riddle can take a seat alongside “Why do companies have such a short-term focus?” and “Why does CEO pay skyrocket even as performance declines?” Rather than ponder the mysteries of the irrational, let us focus on something more useful – understanding this…
From the book, New Product Blueprinting, we know that the B2B customer is generally more knowledgeable, more interested and more objective, which has implications for the quality of insight that we can learn from a customer interview. However, the most important difference, and the most meaningful for B2B market research has to do with the markets themselves: they are more concentrated. This simply means that there are fewer customers. Fewer customers for mining shovels than toothpaste. Think about it…packaging equipment, chemicals,…
“The one who knows the water best is the one who has waded through it.” – Danish Proverb I was once in a product development meeting where product managers and engineers were arguing about the merits of one feature versus another. In order to protect the guilty, let’s pretend that one group was promoting the blue feature, and the other was promoting the red feature. The rhetoric sounded something like this: “If I was a customer, I would want the…
