More Growth - consumer insight, brand positioning, growth strategy

Are you solving customer problems or just getting emotional

2008-09-11T07:30:34-05:00

It is amazing just how different the business environment feels just two months later and yet how similar are the big issues that we are facing and need to deal with in order to get more growth.

I have been struck on several occasions this week by how often marketers explanations of a brands success or failure does not discuss whether the business is really helping to solve customer problems and does not consider the real motivations that cause people to want to buy products and then how they go on to choose your brand.

Instead debate shifts to other subjects like how well the brand engages emotionally with their customers or consumers. For example Google success is analysed by Mark Ritson in Marketing this week (10th Sept page 21)and he makes many good points about how they have been successful, but never goes on to discuss how Google's dominance could be driven by the functional experience delivered to customers.

Google have always delivered on the Power Attribute of "help me find what I am looking for". Their search engine strives to do a better job for customers than the others. They apply this principle not just to search results but also to the display of paid for advertising. If you have tried using their pay per click advertising, you will know that you cannot buy your way to the top of their list. They do not allow advertisers to be at the top of the page just by paying more money for the ad. The pay for click ads at the top of the list are the best available ads that deliver the best answers to search queries. In contrast Yahoo, Microsoft and Overture all have allowed advertisers to buy their way to the top of the list. Advertisers and search engine optimisers often appear on the press and on web forums debating the fairness or wisdom of Google's policies for advertisers and for producing search results. Their analysis often assumes Google wish to maximise short term revenues rather than enhance the user experience. But really advertisers wish to manipulate the system to their advantage. Despite the fact that advertisers are the paying client, Google resist this. What Google seem to keep remembering is that consumers of the search engine are who they must please the most.

Mark Ritson also mentions that Marketing students in the 80's learned their brand management from Coke, whereas Apple taught the key branding lessons in the 90's and Google provides the best branding lesson of the noughties. At Differentiate we would agree with this but with a different analysis

Coke taught us about Availability, Acceptability and Affordability
Apple taught us about design led product innovation
What Google are teaching us is about the value of being a truly customer led business that never loses sight of its mission to deliver the best customer experience.

So in amongst the doom and gloom that is being talked about, have your priorities changed? I am sure they have, but when your advisers tell you that you need to do more emotional engagement, check on the basics first. Remember if you are not solving your customers problems better than your competitors, your experience of the economic downturn will be much worse than that of our competitors. Find out if you are delivering on the Power Attributes, if you do this you will have an easier ride.

Start with the insight that people only buy things when the product or service helps them solve a problem that they have. The product most likely to be chosen is the one that does this the best. Emotional engagement or appeal may well draw customers to choose one brand over another when there is little difference between the choices, but it cannot persuade people to repeatedly buy things that do not offer good solutions to the issue. Emotional engagement tends to be stronger with brands and products that do the best job. It is hard to have a strong emotional engagement with someone who does not help you in some way.

How are consumers reacting to the downturn?

2008-06-25T04:59:40-05:00

We know that "things are going to be tough" this year and maybe "even tougher" next year. What should we do about it? Opinions seem to range from predictions of doom to a rather cosy feeling that maybe we will see it through and it will not be so bad.

In this post we try to apply the principles of the Growth Game to analyse the situation. Analysis "Growth Game" style adheres to three principles.

Stop worrying about the future, but do beware of the Black Swan (see blog entry). Avoid expert predictions of what will happen and instead concentrate on strengthening your ability to compete and the withstand future unexpected shocks.

Actively seek and acquire empirical evidence to understand what is actually happening. Again try and avoid the expert opinions. They tend to offer qualitative observations and are tempted to make predictions. Instead concentrate on evidence of things that are actually changing. In particular look to gain insights about things that directly affect your business.

Avoid "interesting" and focus on "actionable" insights. That means start with the decisions you need to take and then go after the insights that will help you make them.

We have been reviewing some evidence, observations and opinion about how consumers and customers will react to higher prices and lower disposable incomes. I have grouped them into expert opinions, hard empirical evidence, insights and conclusions.

Example predictions/observations from experts

The cumulative effect of numerous cost increases has now reached a tipping point. Consumers are really starting to feel more vulnerable and this has become more pronounced in the past 6 weeks.
With pressure on personal finances people will be less willing to pay a premium for "nice to have" things like more local food and food provenance; sustainable foods, organic and fair trade.
There will be a back to basics trend, grow your own food, more family cooking, use basic ingredients rather than ready meals and less willingness to pay for convenience.
Under financial and moral pressure consumers will find ways to reduce food waste (30% of food bought currently ends up thrown away).
People will switch more of their shopping to discount outlets and local shops reducing both prices and transport costs.
People will eat out less and consumers will switch to more take outs
Concern over climate change will affect what people buy.

A lot of these statements make sense and some may well happen, but remember they are either subjective or a prediction. Remember that experts may well understand what is going on but their predictions are usually unreliable. Take a look at our Black Swan blog post to see the potential pitfalls of listening to expert predictions. We recommend you look at the empirical evidence and come to your own view about how this will affect your business.

Empirical evidence of what is actually happening now (data to May 2008)

The polarisation of markets continues whereby the strongest growth is happening at the top and bottom of markets. The highest growth rates are in premium added value and low price segments whilst the middle gets squeezed.
In Grocery the strongest growth % rates are in discounter stores (Lidl, Netto) and internet grocery deliveries. The biggest absolute cash growth is happening in megastores situated out of town. However, this is not a feature of the downturn. These trends are long term and have not yet changed in 2008.
What has changed in the downturn is lower sales in eating out, clothing, household appliances and furniture. Other sectors including holidays remain resilient.
OL share of total grocery has not increased for 5 years and as yet there is no sustained trend for own label to increase its share.
The % of volume that is offered on promotion has gone up sharply and this is more about multi-buys than price reductions except in Tesco who focus more on price reductions
In 2008 consumers are making fewer big shopping trips, shoppers spend per basket is down and there is less promiscuity between retailers.
Consumers are claiming to be influenced more by a number of ethical issues, CSR, environment, fair trade, food provenance etc. Anecdotal evidence of sales growth in products with these claims suggests this is true.

What insights can we translate from this (whilst avoiding predictions)

Consumers are under financial pressure and are adjusting spending behaviour, but they are choosing carefully where to make the changes. Indulgences and treats remain important, but consumers selecting which ones matter most (quality food and holidays seem to be doing well).
The fundamentals of what consumers want (the power drivers of choice) remain the same in slowdown or boom. The mega trends of health, convenience, naturalness/food provenance and ethical concerns remain in force and continue to be the main sources of growth in markets.
There is no sign of a flight from quality. There is some smart shopping to get and be able to afford the quality (promotions, discounters, local sourcing).

Translating insights into action

Reducing waste is an insight that could offer opportunities. We know consumers are making more frequent shopping trips. This could correlate with reducing wasted food. The other area of waste that is an environmental issue is packaging. May be helping consumers reduce waste could offer opportunities for innovation.

Nielsen recently quoted a survey stating that the top 20 innovations have all been about packaging, format and convenience. As marketers are we smart enough to come up with packaging formats that reduce waste and have less environmental impact whilst still delivering the merchandising impact and consumer convenience? It must be worth a try.

The Growth Game takes these guiding principles of getting and translating insights into the practical steps for growth. The process rests on empirical observations and measurement and is all about engaging the business team to create practical and credible ideas. To find out more take a look here

What do philosophers and marketers have in common

2008-06-25T05:22:37-05:00

We worry about things that seems not important to everyone else and can use language that is obscure and difficult to follow.

I was reminded of this when I attended a philosophy lecture discussing how the philosopher Richard Rorty struggled to reconcile the fact that he was passionate about social justice and at the same time want to be selfish and spend time on transient personal pleasures such as the cultivation of rare orchids. It seemed that the philosopher’s intelligence led them to worry about things that seem quite straightforward to the rest of us.

Most of us have accepted that a part of our life may be devoted to causes whilst other parts of our lives are around personal stuff and other parts of our lives are economic. We know we have these different needs. We do not struggle with needing to explain a dilemma as Richard Rorty did.

As I left I found myself thinking that as marketers we can be seen to worry about things that the rest of the business are not so concerned about (e.g. brand essence, brand wheels, abstract ideas). This makes us seem a bit detached from the day to day realities.

The second tendency marketers share with philosophers is to use language that seems somewhat obscure to the rest of the business? This happened to me in this lecture where I felt like an outsider observing a rather strange parallel universe in which the language of discussion was unnecessarily complex and obscure.

Our own research has shown that marketing teams who do not communicate internally and have less frequent interactions with the rest of the business and are less well regarded.

Whereas, the best market driven businesses have marketers who are well regarded and have invested time in interacting with the whole business so that their ideas are practical and useful and they communicate effectively so people understand the benefits.

There are two behaviours of these philosophers that we have observed in marketers and if you fall into this then you run a big risk of seeming detached from reality and reducing your impact on the business.

Firstly, like the philosophers, marketers can spend time exploring things that seem unconnected with the reality of getting more profitable growth. I have sat through U&A presentations that provide interesting descriptions of consumer behaviour but offer little insight as to how the business could do things differently to satisfy customers. Then on other occasions there are lengthy meetings to develop and discuss things like “brand essence” or the “brand pyramid”. These discussions can seem to have little to do with the day to day business of getting more growth and hitting targets. These discussions have little practical bearing on the decisions about products, services, prices, distribution and marketing communications that will drive growth.

Secondly, like the philosophers, marketers can use words and language that seems disconnected from the reality of getting more profitable growth. The use of this language can obscure the real value that marketer’s programmes and ideas might have. So whilst the business discusses customers, consumers, sales, products, services, reputation, distribution, logistics, prices, profit margins, promotions. Marketers talk about branding, brand image, strategy, awareness, design and identity. Many of these things may well be important but the links to profitable business growth and real practical decisions are less than clear to your colleagues in other functions.

So I left this lecture reflecting on how marketers can avoid behaviours that will restrict their influence and may mean the business is less market and customer driven. Try this instead.

1. Use shorter words.
2. Use the language of the business, not the language of the text book or the advertising agency.
3. Make sure that the ideas and concepts you discuss will help you make practical decisions. We call these concepts “really useful concepts”.

Are you only doing the things you are best at?

2008-05-08T10:43:29-05:00

if not you are probably struggling to get enough growth or find yourself competing on price. I was reminded of this by two features in Marketing Week yesterday.

One was about Reckitt Benckiser who have just posted results with revenue up 20% and beating all their targets. The other was about Tesco online who are enjoying good growth in their core grocery delivery and Tesco Direct businesses, but are pulling out of house sales, flowers and clothing as they are losing customers here.

The most striking thing about the Reckitt's brand list is how each product as the best at what it does, and in each case the product focusses on a narrow task. e.g.

Vanish - removes small difficult stains
Finish - dishwasher tablets
Calgon - removes hard water deposits
Dettol - anti bacterial cleaning
Airwick - air freshening
Lemsip - flu treatments
Nurofen - fast pain relief

Tesco's forays into markets that might seem attractive (flowers, house sales, clothing) have struggled as they end up being one provider competing on price or offering various new features.

Big brands also do this. They must be the best at something. Coke has a broad appeal and sells some generic soft drink values as well as its own brand personality, but it wins by being more available than any other brand.

Mobile phone handsets that are winning at the moment seem to do one thing especially well. Sony Erricsson have a walkman range focused on music, Samsung really attend to style and feel with a lot of designs so that friends can each have a different one. Nokia and Motorola have struggled to stand out more recently.

This has got me thinking - what is it that Differentiate does best? The best way to find out is to ask your customers. I plan to ask our customers and ezine readers in the next ezine.

Identify what you do best and then narrow/specialise your business to deliver this and focus on selling to the people for whom what you do best is what they want.

In the language of the Growth Game - what you do best helps you define the characteristics of your Power Categories. This is where you should specialise and focus.

Reckitt Benckiser did not win by trying to take Unilever, P&G and GSK head on, they found specific niches where they could be the best and they focussed on these. If big players like this find specialising is the route to profitable premium priced growth. I guess we can all learn from that.

Boris v Ken - what can we learn about how customers make choices?

2008-05-06T08:48:51-05:00

Using your existing data?

How can you discover the Power Attributes that determine why consumers choose your brand without doing new and expensive surveys? Our answer is that you can and should take a stab at it. Whilst doing new research will be more robust, you can understand valuable insights about your Power Attributes by analysing whatever data or insight you already have or can easily gather. This ezine shows you an example of how to do this. We have analysed the result of the London Mayoral election to illustrate how this can work.

Analysis of Boris victory?

Voters' and customers' choices can seem a bit odd. So how come the electorate plumped for Boris, who had been seen as a bit a bit of a joke and prone to gaffs and offered an uncertain prospect of being competent? We have analysed the Power Attributes to understand how voters made this choice.

It is possible to take a good stab at understanding the Power Attributes using available published data. In this case we have located two very different pre election polls to help us work out the Power Attributes.

Conquest's Metaphorix Poll for ITV London
IPSOS Mori poll for Unison

Power Attributes must possess both importance and uniqueness. So Power Attributes for the candidates are ones that are both important to voters and in some degree are unique to the candidate. Attributes will have both functional and emotional elements and both will influence the customers decision to purchase. In this case of this election functional really means policy issues and emotional attributes relate to the candidate's personality. We started by looking at policy attributes. MORI revealed the ranking of importance of the policy issues.

Importance ranking to voters

1. Crime/Policing
2. Transport
3. Healthcare/NHS
4. Cost of living
5. Education
6. Pollution/environment

It was difficult for the candidates to get uniqueness on these issues - even though the candidates were able to offer some differences in their policies. Ken had a good track record on transport. Brian Paddick had been a policeman. Boris talked a lot about crime reduction. When you look beyond crime and transport, the next three issues lay completely outside the control of the Mayor (NHS, Cost of living, Education).

The personalities of the candidates offered much more scope for uniqueness

So personality attributes may offer more scope for real power. When we look for clues about these more emotional attributes, the metaphorix survey done by Conquest for ITV London was able to highlight the emotional beliefs about the personalities of the candidates. If we start by looking at the importance of the different personality attributes, we discover that the most important attribute is

Trustworthy

However none of the candidates possessed this to any adequate or differential degree. So despite trustworthy being important as an attribute, it lacked power as a means to choose between the candidates. So we need to look further to find attributes that are powerful for each candidate. Conquest discovered there were some attributes where the candidates differed.

Ken	Boris	Brian
arrogant	refreshing	boring
confident	confident	focused
capable	approachable	honest

We can eliminate confident as this did not distinguish Ken or Boris and also knock out boring as this is not a positive. The remaining attributes provide the clues as to why Boris won.

Boris won the day by being approachable and refreshing. Ken's lead on capable was outdone by Londoners' desire for a change. For Brian Paddick, being focused and honest was just not important enough to Londoners.

Power Attributes for London Mayor

The Power Attributes for this London Mayoral election were to offer a change from a tired and slightly arrogant incumbent and promise to address violent crime alongside transport issues.

No doubt the national issues of healthcare, cost of living and education played a part. Ken would have suffered by his association with a struggling Labour government. But since these issues remain outside the direct control of the Mayor and were difficult for the any candidates to discuss.

For an attribute to be powerful you must be able to create some uniqueness. The most powerful attributes were those where the candidates could establish some uniqueness. It is the combination of an attribute being both important and unique, that creates the power to influence voters or consumers choices.

Which is more important?

2008-04-22T10:56:14-05:00

Helping your customers or selling to customers?

The business answer is we need to do both. But what would the vote be in your business if you were told you could only do one of these and you had to choose?

My experience of trying to buy a flat screen TV last week would suggest the answer varies in different organisations. I tried three different places:

Google: lots of helpful information, no selling, independent advice (no product experience).
John Lewis: helpful, little selling, clarity about the solution, real product experience.
Currys: no help, stressful experience, plenty of selling, lots of offers, a good credit deal.

Interestingly Google and John Lewis are doing quite well whereas DSG (Currys) are suffering in these more turbulent times. DSG management seem to be blaming the economic difficulties, but I am left wondering if their problems are to do with too much selling and not enough helping.

Google and John Lewis know that they must help their customers whereas in many businesses the emphasis on marketing and sales has been about getting the message across, making the offer, closing the deal. But is this really want customers want? Is this what is most important to customers? Is this the most effective way to get more growth?

Businesses sometimes struggle to see what is most important to their customers. Last ezine we discussed ways around this. This article takes this one step further and suggests that by starting with selling as the source of growth many businesses are distracted from what is important to their customers. This distraction and neglect of what is really important to customers is likely to lead to less growth and less success.

How well do you understand your customers problems?

How do you ensure your products and services help your customers? Do you or your colleagues struggle to see that what customers want is help to solve a problem? Do you focus on selling at the exclusion of helping?

Increasingly businesses that help are more successful than those that just sell. Google is the ultimate "help not sell" company and seems to enjoy the highest brand valuation in the world (BrandZ published today)

How did this work in the case of my TV purchase. My problem or opportunity is that I want to be able to relax with the TV only when really I feel the need. I do not want the machine in my face every time I sit down in the living room, so we will put it in a smaller separate room. When I go to the internet or the store I am looking for some help to solve these problems. So my search extends to appearance, size, discreteness, on demand TV services, as well as picture quality and sound quality (the only thing anyone talked about was picture quality).

Customers do not want is to be sold a product. Customers want to solve problems issues and realise opportunities that they face in their lives. Features of products and services that businesses can offer them are only important when they help with this. Businesses that help their customers will win. Those that just sell to their customers are likely to lose out to smarter competitors.

So when you go and ask your customers what is important to them, ask them about their lives and their problems not just the features of your products and services.

Now if you were forced to choose between only helping your customers or only selling to your customers, which would you choose

If you are interested to arrange a free introductory consultation to help you understand what your Power Attributes might be, then click here to find out more about this. free consultation

If you think you know what your Power Attributes are but are struggling to get your colleagues to see it that way, then click here take a look at our marketing influence ideas click here.

Thought for the day (maybe even thought for the month)

2008-04-14T04:07:38-05:00

Saw this on www.gapingvoid.com today

Made me think a bit. Maybe some of the ideas in the more growth blog could be more useful if we apply this principle to our writing.

Will try it for the next post

How do you know what is important to customers?

2008-04-08T13:27:57-05:00

Why is it that once we walk through the door of the business each day we are programmed to want customers to believe that what we are doing is the answer to their problems and that the features and benefits of our products will be important and useful to them. Suddenly the world seems to be centred around the products and brands that we sell.

Somehow the corporate mission or our own ambition can blind us to insights we acquire every day. As we spend our home and shopping lives being customers and making choices between products we can develop a good understanding of what it means to be a customer. We can understand what is important and how trivial or important different decisions are to us.

I have been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book, The Black Swan,

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

See our discussion click here

He has been reminding me how easily we can get persuaded by the "narrative" explanations that exist within the business. How easily we tend to seek confirmation of what we would like to believe in the anecdotes and events around us. How difficult and more challenging it is to rigorously assess the evidence.

How do you deal with this?

As a successful business person you know you must cut through this and you should understand what is important to your customers.

But how much time and money do you devote specifically to find out what is really important to customers so you can act on it? And if you do spend time on it, what is the best way to discover what is important to our customers?

But you may be thinking that you already know what is important to customers. Why should you invest more money and time in finding out what is important to customers. Just stay with us for 2 more minutes reading this ezine and we will give you the chance to assess whether you have done enough.

What we have found

We have frequently observed in project after project and study after study is that successful business people do know a lot about what is important to their customers. Especially sales people who are talking regularly with customers and marketers who choose to spend time listening to consumers.

We have noticed that the managers in the business tend to get it 80% to 90% right. Which sounds great. And would that we could get everything 80-90% right! But the problem is the thing you miss out or get wrong is often the important attribute feature or benefit that could make all the difference.

Here are some examples from our own studies

Examples where managers think something is important but consumers think is less important than other things

Healthy snacks - less than 3% fat, not embarrassing to eat in public
Gardening - used by professionals, use less peat
Reinsurance - can offer independent advice, harnesses innovation.

Examples where consumers think something is important but managers did not spot it

Healthy Snacks - is a satisfying eat
Gardening - Is attractive to wild life, forgives me if I forget to water it.
Reinsurance - Flexible to my needs, fixes problems rapidly

How can you know what is important to customers?

Inevitably the most straightforward answer is to ask them and we would be the first to say that asking them in any form is better than not asking them. But there are a few pointers that we have learned.

We have found the concept of an attribute is valuable to help distinguish what is more important or less important
Don't get too tangled up in whether the attribute is a feature a benefit an emotion or an image, it does not matter. What matters is which attributes are important
Ask the customers/consumers to help you prepare your list of attributes. They will often come up with some attributes that you did not think of.
A third party conversation is more likely to reveal the truth, if you have a relationship with your customers, this can get in the way of a truly transparent conversation. On line or paper survey tools can also do this very well
Plan the approach so you do not lead them to give you the answer you want to hear.
Ranking attributes from 1-10 or 1-20 is more revealing than asking for a score on a scale where 1 is not important and 5 is very important.

Attribute importance is a fundamentally important part of helping our clients understand how customers make choices between brands. The really useful concept of Power Attributes is based around what is important to customers and how you can differentiate yourself to them.

You can download our paper on this click here

You can see our website discussion on this click here

You can see our case study examples click here

You can see our blog posts on Power Attributes click here

Fabulous brands will disappear overnight?

2008-03-06T05:22:44-06:00

Lord Bell of Chime communications was quoted as saying this at the ISBA conference

"If we don't take action, fabulous brands that spent millions building their reputation will disappear overnight."

The issue referred to is action to dissuade the government from imposing further restrictions and controls on advertising in areas such as unhealthy foods, cars that are bad for the environment, alcohol etc.

This post is not about about the merits or demerits of advertising controls, but to challenge the astonishing presumption that a great brand could not survive without advertising.

Some of the greatest and most fabulous brands of the 21st century became great brands long before they invested in broadcast advertising. How did they do this? They created products and services that people wanted and executed them better than others. Here are a few plucked from the Superbrands top 500

Google
Microsoft
Yahoo
Rough Guides
Facebook
Denon
Easyjet
Ebay
Rolls Royce Aerospace
Eddie Stobat
Blackberry

And some others
Innocent
Pret a manger

Brand reputation and durability is built upon people's day to day experience of the brand or what they hear about it from other people. How did people discover these brands and services before they started advertising? It will be different in each case but we know from our Power Channels analysis that whilst TV ads can be influential, word of mouth, previous experiences, being available in the right places are often the drivers of growth.

I would beg to suggest that the "fabulous brands that will disappear overnight" are not really so fabulous. Great brands that deliver things that customers want and make themselves available in the right places will be sought after and customers will find them. If advertising is restricted then brand owners will create new ways to make themselves famous. I am not so sure their destiny is tied to the availability of mass market advertising.

Having said that, advertising is a powerful tool and persuading the government to back off is a good idea. But to do this we will need more powerful arguments than this one as advocated by Lord Bell at ISBA.

Footnote: People's day to day experiences are shaped by the way the business delivers Power Attributes to the Power Categories. This work underpins the brands success. Customers and prospects then discover this through the Power Channels, which include advertising, but there is much more. (definitions click here or sign up here to get our free paper "The Growth Game").

Why you should worry less about the future?

2008-03-06T21:17:35-06:00

I was listening to this fascinating discussion on Start the Week on BBC Radio 4 on Monday

We are hard-wired not to truly estimate risk, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate and categorize – and we don’t even realise it. What we should understand, argues the academic and city trader NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB, is that our world is dominated by 'black swans', highly improbable events that have a massive impact and are nearly impossible to predict. Black swans, he says, mean we should ignore ‘experts’, stop reading newspapers and learn to take advantage of uncertainty. Nassim Nicholas Taleb will be delivering lectures on The Black Swan at the University of Oxford on Wednesday 5 March and at the London School of Economics on Thursday 6 March. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is published by Penguin.

Here is the podcast link Nassim is in the last 15 minutes

I got 5 points from the discussion

What actually happens is often not possible to predict
Measuring (empirical?) what is happening is more useful
Projecting current trends is more reliable than expert predictions
Our assessment of the risks we take will be wrong.
Newspapers, colleagues and experts often try to convince us we can predict and manage risk.

It got me thinking, so what does this mean for businesses in pursuit of more growth?

You should spend less time worrying less about the future. So reduce the time you spend

Worrying about things you cannot control
Forecasting future events (since we will be wrong)
Predicting competitor reaction
Reacting to the latest hot topic in the marketing press

You should spend more time strengthening your ability to withstand unexpected shocks. To do this, measure what is actually happening to the business and assume it will continue until you create change by doing these things

Discover your customers frustrations and unmet needs
Know and measure what is important to customers
Discover how to make this more available to customers
Take action based on these insights and measure the results

You can do a simple audit to see where the balance of your time is spent. Is it more on worrying about the future or could you do more to strengthen your competitive ability.

Corporate teams can easily get sucked into worrying about the future, whereas entrepreneurs tend to focus on things they can do now.

In the meantime. I am off to the LSE on Thursday to gain some more insight into how we can strengthen our approach to helping you translate insights about customers into practical steps that will create more growth.

If you would like a free telephone audit to discover if you are worrying about the future too much or are doing enough to get on with the present, then email us or phone us on 020 8334 7202 to arrange it.

P. S. This is exactly what Power Categories and Power Attributes and Power Channels will help you achieve this action orientation and address the business fundamentals. The approach is about translating insights about customers into practical steps that will strengthen your competitive position in the market.