5 Key Insights for Senior Leadership Teams

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I've been working with senior leadership teams for over a decade. Over that time, I've helped them with their brand strategy, business development, company culture, and marketing tactics to name just a few.

Here are 5 key insights I've learned about the common challenges they face and what they can do to solve them.

They spend too much time iterating the product

Of course, a good product is essential, but it's usually not the reason for low sales. Actually, in most client cases, I have found their product to be rather good.

Where leadership teams go wrong is in their understanding of HOW the product fits into their customers' lives. This fundamental lack of understanding of who their ideal customers are is what causes this issue.

When a product isn't selling or attracting customers, the natural assumption is that there's an issue with the product. "It's missing a feature" or "We also need to offer X". From my experience, however, that's usually not the problem.

Instead, you need to have a better understanding of your customers' lives, what groups they are a part of, how they commute to work, what they value, how they interact with your product, and so on. Resonating with a need or pain point is what sells a product, not packing it full of bells and whistles.

This leads me to the second challenge senior leadership teams face...

They throw money at marketing without the proper data

Marketing seems to be the topic with the biggest question mark around it. "How do we get as many eyeballs on our brand with a small marketing budget?"

This is the most common question I've been asked over the years, and my answer is "You're asking the wrong question." Instead, you should be asking, "How do we get the RIGHT eyeballs on our brand with the limited budget we have?"

As a startup or SME, your goal isn't to get as many eyeballs on your brand but rather the right eyeballs. This ties closely to my previous point about truly knowing your customers. When you know who they are, what they're doing, and where they spend their time, you can create targeted campaigns designed to catch them at the right time and with the right message.

I've also discovered that a lot of companies don't give their marketing department the freedom to try things. Marketing with a small budget isn't going to work if you're playing it safe, and you don't have the means to spread your message on every TV channel, billboard, and social media platform.

So what should you do instead?

To make a small budget go far, you need to give your marketing department permission to try something crazy, something we've never seen before. This is how you make an impact and win the hearts of customers.

They don't know what makes them different

I have found that a lot of senior leadership teams don't know what makes them different - their "USP", if you like.

The reason for this is quite simple. They are looking to their product for their unique point of difference when instead they should be looking to their brand.

The reality is this - most companies have not brought something truly innovative to the market. That may be difficult to hear but it's true.

The good news is you don't need to create something truly innovative. In order to be different you simply need to package your product in a way that FEELS new and exciting to your target audience.

How you present your product, the messaging that goes with it, and how vividly you can connect your product to your customers' desired future state is the key to standing out.

They don't know how to interpret customer feedback

A lot of leadership teams are great at listening to their customers and collating their feedback. What they're not so good at is knowing what to do with that data to improve the product or brand experience.

There are two main reasons for this:

1. They're simply too close to it - sometimes the most obvious solutions are the hardest to see when you're so closely involved in the daily operations of the business, and a completely new mode of thinking is required. We can help with that.
2. They collect the numbers but not the behaviours - it's all well and good having stats and figures, but what about emotions and behaviours? You may know "what" people do but if you don't know "how" or "why" then you can't make informed decisions about the necessary changes.

How do people engage with your brand or product? What do they feel leading up to a buying decision? Why do they take action? Instead of just collecting data, pair it with interviews and observational studies to really understand your customers' behaviours.

Ps. Some brands don't have a two-way dialogue with their customers whatsoever. If that's you, you need to start developing channels for communication and feedback before you even worry about how to interpret that data.

They copy the strategy of successful brands

At face value, it makes a lot of sense to copy the successful strategies of others. In practice, however, it is the worst decision you can make and the biggest trap I've seen senior leadership teams fall into.

If you're copying strategies from brands that have succeeded in the past, you're likely not moving with the times. And if you're copying strategies from current competitors, you're not giving customers a reason to choose you over them. You're just blending in.

Sure, look at successful business models, common tools, and proven systems. That stuff is all great. However, as I mentioned earlier, nothing good comes from playing things safe when it comes to building a small brand.

Dare to be different.

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Did any of these points resonate with you?

If so, leave a comment with your experience and lets help other leadership teams avoid the same mistakes.

Need help aligning your leadership team, thinking differently, or building your brand? Get in touch.