Whatever products or services have allowed you to reach the place you are in your business or industry today, they are not enough to get you very much further. Fully 80 percent of the products and services that people will be using in five years do not exist today. This means that, on average, 20 percent of products and services offered in the market today, including yours, will be obsolete within twelve months and will need to be replaced with products and services that are more attractive to more customers.
While at first glance the problem of obsolescence may seem daunting, once again creative solutions will be sparked by the right questions. Continually ask questions about your products or services to stimulate ideas to make them more marketable or profitable.
Here are some questions that you can ask and answer on a regular basis.
1. Could you put your products or services to other uses? Could they be used by other companies, other industries, or other customers?
One of our rules is that if you have a good product or service and your customers are not buying it, you should change your customers rather than change your product. Perhaps you are aiming your marketing and sales efforts at the wrong target.
2. Could you adapt, copy, or emulate what someone else is doing to make your products or services better? One of the smartest things that you can do in business is to admire your successful competitors and then look for ways to do them one better.
You can look for ways to transfer an innovation or a technology from one industry to another. Henry Ford got the idea for the production line by watching a meatpacking plant in operation.
What examples of successful businesses around you could be copied to make your business operate more efficiently and profitably?
3. Could you modify, change, or repackage your existing product so that it performs or looks like something different? Could you put a new twist on it? Walt Disney and Roy Disney were visiting Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen in the late 1940s and noticed that the park was spotless, with not so much as a matchstick or piece of paper anywhere. By contrast, almost all amusement parks in America, large and small, including county fairs and rodeos, were dirty and littered with trash, with food thrown on the ground. At that moment, Walt conceived of Disneyland. He said, “I’m going to build an amusement park that is so clean and beautiful that parents will bring their children from everywhere to visit it over and over again.” The rest is history.
4. Could you magnify the product? Could you make it bigger, stronger, or shinier? Could you increase it in some way in order to make it more attractive?
We take our whole family each year for a one-week Caribbean cruise on the Allure of the Seas cruise liner. When it was built, it was the largest cruise ship in history, holding 5,000 people. It includes seven completely different environments, from subtropical to desert, and has many European and American boardwalk-style restaurants.
5. Could you minimize it? Could you make it smaller, shorter, or more economic in scale? What could you remove or subtract from it to make it simpler? Could you break it down into its component parts to sell separately?
6. How about a substitute? Could you use a different material or process or manufacturing or distribution method, or use a different way of advertising or packaging?
7. Could you rearrange or interchange components in your product or service? In doing so, is there some way to make your product or service more attractive, more salable, cheaper, or more desirable to more customers?
8. Could you reverse your thinking and take a completely opposite approach to what you’re currently doing? One of the reversals that I used many years ago was instead of lowering the price to clear out a serious product overstock, I raised the price. Because of the higher perceived value, and a couple of special bonuses that we included, we cleared out a product that we had not been able to move for several months.
9. Could you combine your product with something else? Could you bundle it with other items to make a higher-value offering?
By bundling everything that the customer needs in a particular product or service into a single offering at a single price, you dramatically decrease the complexities and uncertainties of buying and simultaneously increase the attractiveness of your product or service.
10. Can you find value in a by-product? Sometimes you can. There is the story about a manufacturer of adhesive ECG electrodes. These electrodes were three-inch circles with a three-quarter-inch hole punched out of the center and discarded.
One day the manufacturer decided to package the waste product or “dots.” They found dozens of uses—as bumpers to stop doors and drawers from slamming, or to keep pictures from scraping the walls, or to help identify passengers’ luggage at the airport. The manufacturer gave away these “dots” to its customers, who were delighted, and it cost the company virtually nothing.
Think and see the world through the minds and eyes of your customers. What do your customers want and need that they are willing to pay for? How could you provide your customers with a buying experience that is superior to that of your competitors? There is no end to answers to these questions.
ACTION EXERCISES
1. Identify three specific ways that you could improve your current product or service offerings to make them more attractive to your customers.
2. Phone ten of your best customers and ask them for their opinions and advice on how you could make your products or services more attractive and useful to them. You will probably be astonished at the number of good ideas they will give you.