Author: animeshjmathur

Working backward from the customer result – Part 3

Assumptions, Customer Delight, Customers, Marketing, Product Management

Now from here onwards, things get interesting. We have worked on the Future Reality Tree. We have identified the possible chokes / constraints in the system. We have also exposed the unspoken assumptions in our thought pattern.

So now we realise that the same Product or Service can be used for different use cases. And based on the use case the delivery can be different, the users can be different and therefore the method to reach them to give them your message can be different. This is where the role of product management stands out.usto

Lets take a very mundane example of an everyday product – car engine oil. Every car needs it. There’s not too much differentiation. Now the engine oil can be sold to the OEMs – here its a bulk purchase. It can be sold to the authorised service centres of the car companies – it will still be bulk purchase but the quantity and therefore the negotiations will be different. And you can sell it at gas stations (so you have to talk to multiple gas stations and the quantities are smaller) And you could also sell it via maybe big box retailers.

For each of these different markets your packaging would change, the people you connect to for getting the deal change.

So you identify each segment and how you will reach them, what are the dynamics. A big OEM may not want to add another vendor to their existing suppliers even if you have better product specs, because it can hamper production/roll-out schedules.

On the other hand a gas station may only keep small quantities of small size packages. Since she already has existing suppliers giving the products why should she look at yours.

This is where your true marketing creativity comes out, when you start working backwards from the end result.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Working backward from the customer result – Part 2

constraints, Customer Delight, Marketing

Yesterday we discussed on how you can start with the Future Reality Tree (FRT)from the theory of constraints. For this to work you need to have a very strong understanding of your market, so that you can keep the assumptions down to the minimum.

Once you have created the (FRT) it will also help you identify the chokes or constraints in the marketing process. This is the critical part because with this knowledge you can work on mechanisms to ensure that your process incorporates the constraint and then gives the result.

As an example if you are an author and you want the physical copy of your books to sell say 10000 copies in the first 30 days of its launch. For that to happen two things are critical – one is people know that you have a book coming out on a specific date and two they should go and buy it. For buying they have two options – online retailers and physical bookshops. Lets now only look at the physical book shops.

If a person knows that you are coming out with a book, and he reads your books and he likes to read physical copies of books and he does not like to wait for the book to arrive by courier/mail THEN he is a prospect for you to buy a book from a bookstore.

So how will he know that the book that he wants is available at the book store at the airport / railway station , when he is catching his flight/train. You will need to figure that out because now this is where everything can come to a halt. Whether you need to tie-up for signage with the shopkeeper, whether your books should be kept right at the entrance, then what would the shop charge you. You need to find that out and close all those pieces.

What this whole process of working backwards helps you do is come to what you need to do today – in the now / present – so that you can sell 10000 books from launch date to 30 days.

Today is all that you have. The future will come when it becomes “now” and we can’t forecast it. But we can take steps today.

So work on your customer journeys backwards to create delighted customers.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Working backward from the customer result

constraints, Customer Delight, Customers, ideal customer, Marketing, single target market

When you think you have identified the niche, single target market (ideal client) and you have to figure out how to reach them, a good way to start is by thinking about the result your client will get by using your product or service.

Suppose you know the ideal result you can get for your client. Does that result actually make an impact on your ideal client. If it does not, then you need to rethink about the ideal client and the single target market. If it will make an impact will they become Raving Fans. If not what will need to be done to make them Raving Fans.

If the result you can get is going to make an impact and make them Raving Fans, then you need to think in terms of the journey the client will need to take to reach that stage and then work backwards. Its something similar to the Eli Goldiratt theory of constraints – future reality tree (FRT). You go through the complete logic , starting with the end in mind and then flow backwards to the starting point, to figure out where things could go wrong or the unsaid assumptions.

Recently my team and I were doing a Future Reality Tree for one of our operations and my colleague stopped me from proceeding because we had listed out way to many assumptions for the success of the end result. With so many assumptions not getting into certainty stage, it was going to be a disaster. So now we have one person who is going to work through the next two weeks to figure out how many of the assumptions can be made into certainty by working on platforms like Linkedin etc.

When you do this FRT, you will also be able to work out the medium which can help get you the best/fastest results. It will help you also see the chokes in the system, for you to get the result for your customer.

We will work on the next steps from here in the next post.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Simplifying life – remove Apps from your devices

charity, Focus

I have already shared how I have tried to get back time by eliminating a majority of the alerts on both my phone and tab. After the initial anxiety, I have now got used to the fact that there won’t be any prompts. I go and check my messages once in 2-3 hours. Rest I don’t even bother. This has not only simplified my life to a certain extent, it has also meant that I can focus better with less disturbances

The next thing I have started doing on my phone is removing the Apps altogether. As a background, I used to get excited whenever I heard of a new “app” that I didn’t know about and download it. The Android play store has such a huge number of “apps” just focussed on productivity related stuff. Since I am always looking at methods to improve my productivity, I would keep downloading them.

Now two challenges- one they would fill up my memory. But more than that I was ending up working for the “apps” rather than the “app” making me more productive. So after the initial two or there days of usage, they would lie unused.

Using the 80/20 rule – I sorted all the “apps” that I haven’t used in 30 days and slowly eliminated them. Even now there are quite a few “apps” leftover and I am a little scared of removing them because some of them have a direct linkage to the keyboard and voice commands I use.

My ideal situation I think will be when all these “apps” can reside on one screen so that I don’t have to keep sliding the screens to find the application.

I have started having this realisation more and more that days are lost in seconds, not in hours. Most of us are conscious of the hours that we are using for doing a job or how many hours of overflow took place. But it’s in the seconds that we lose our day. A few seconds lost in trying to find this “app” and a few seconds lost there, slowly you end up losing many many minutes through the day, which aggregate into a lot of hours.

So try to simplify your life and get more clarity as well.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!