09/25/2023 – 14:20
Choosing which customers to serve (and, consequently, which not to serve) is an unorthodox way of thinking about a new business, but few things are more important than strategically choosing the customers you want to delight. It may seem like serving the largest number of customers (any customers!) is always a good alternative. Well, that’s not always the case…
The pinnacle of marketing is to provide an offer so successful that customers don’t even look for alternatives to it. Some brands are in this place that is enviable, at the same time unstable: Apple, Harley-Davidson, Havaianas and the hairdresser or barber that the customer has followed for years. Reaching this level presupposes an exceptionally good offer in what a group of customers considers essential.
Innovating is not just a matter of creating products, but also involves discussing who the products are intended for. In Google’s early years, sales efforts were practically irrelevant — customers purchased the offering on their own, influenced by people in an ever-widening network. The monetization strategy was perfectly aligned (at least at that time) with customer needs, leading the company to make billions and change history.
Compare this scenario with a dentist who opens her office in a small town in the countryside. Getting clients is a challenge — it will take a lot of work to win over those who don’t yet have a dentist and perhaps even more work to convince people to switch… The patients our dentist gets may still demand a level of service that is impossible to achieve and eventually expect to pay as little as possible for this. The bargaining power, in this case, is almost entirely on the buying side — this is definitely not good for the dental business in particular, nor for business in general.
Before investing in design, in infrastructure or sophisticated tools, it is essential that leadership takes its thesis about the product to the streets and practices winning over some customers
A balanced organization has customers who recognize its value proposition, so that it can build, from the consumer relationships that may be established, a solid economic foundation and a positive work environment. Regarding this last point, a survey of data from American companies over the last 25 years identified that those with a better organizational climate consistently have 3 percentage points of upside in share price appreciation in relation to the control group — in other words, the work Creating a good place to work matters a lot!
Before investing in design, infrastructure or sophisticated tools, it is essential that leadership takes its thesis about the product to the streets and practices winning over some customers, even with an offer that is still in its infancy. Coming home with the precise answer to what we need to do to delight the customers we actually want is the foundation of healthy innovation.
The development of innovations must start from the vision of what will delight a strategically chosen customer segment, with increasingly personalized offers.
A good strategy for selecting and attracting high-value customers is practically the only thing that all successful organizations have in common.
Luís Guedes is teacher from FIA Business School
#Choose #customers #choose #future