Customer-Focused Marketing
Here’s a discussion that those of you interested in marketing will find interesting. My friend Terry Ribb wrote to me extolling this video in which a brilliant Stanford Professor speaks on customer-focused marketing (which happens to be exactly what Terry and I believe). Do yourself a favor and check out this link.
I wrote back: Well, obviously this guy thinks like we do, with his customer-centricity. And he presents his ideas in a very cogent fashion, doesn’t he? I’ve heard this exact idea a few times through my career — though most people don’t get it at all. I feel like I’m a member of a cult – the cult of customer-centered marketing. 🙂
Customer focused marketing – what a unique idea! Steve does a great job explaining this, but one item he misses is LISTENING to the customers. It is easy to ask what are your needs, but you must be able to listen and understand how the product needs to be chnaged or designed or developed to satisfy those needs. This is a skill set based on experience in the business you are trying to start. New entrepreneurs do not often have this. Their “baby” can’t do that, so the customer is asking for something that is not possible. Head down and go build your baby.
The second issue I have with Steve is that he lives and breathes in the Silcon Valley business model. Personally, this is a short term model based on VC’s getting in early and getting out quickly by selling the company to someone else. There is no concern for other than making a quick profitable return. That is why Steve talks about 1:1000 odds to hit it big. One statistic Steve did not mention is how many new companies fail within the first 5 years? It is about 90%. That is because short term does not usually mean sustainable.
Steve does a great job stressing voice of the customer by going out with prototypes and talking to your customers and understanding their problems then building new prototype and going out again. I can relate to this very well because we have used everything that Steve has spoke about except we have started our company with a 25 year business plan. Can you predict 25 years from now? Certainly not, but when you know you want to be in business in 25 years, you do things differently today. You build a great product, because you know without it you will not get repeat customers. You stress a complete product with effective sales, options, accessories and service. And unlike Silicon Valley short term mentality, you focus not on a quick sale, but a sustainable long term business. If you have investors looking for only quick returns, you are better off without them because with them you will not be able to build a sustainable company.
The financial market today stinks. Investors are not interested in learning new tricks. If you are not a high tech company touting technology that will change the World over night, you are toast. Why are investors only looking for the golden ring. Ordinary current technology that perhaps is repackaged into something the customers want is not an acceptable investment. Why can’t a start-up get funded with basic “ordinary” manufacturing of a customer driven product that none of its competition can do competitively due to your internal knowledge of an industry? This knowledge in not learned in school but by working in an industry for many years. To an investor, this is not interesting because they do not even understand it.
We have done all of what Steve has recommended, except we have not been able to get financed. In fact we have been working on this for over 7 years, primarily by being self funded and doing things very cost effectively. We have stressed leveraging rather than buying everything. We have been sustainable and have reached a point where our customers only want to know one thing, when can they order one. We listened very carefully to our customers and then translated those thoughts into product attributes and guess what; the Customers love our product. It is only the investors looking for the golden ring that have not shown interest. Like Steve said, our motto has been run silent, run deep. But we have surfaced with little investor interest. Yes, we have talked to VC’s and they typically try to get us off our business model, so that we will get into trouble and need more money from them. They do this often with companies, watch out for it. They are greedy, but those are the terms they operate on.
If you want to see a customer driven product, visit us at http://www.EcoVElectric.com.