No one wants 2nd place
Todd Wilms
Author. Strategic Advisor. Angel. Board Member. Superfan of the Underdog and Trendsetter behind “Pandemic Casual”
Why your company isn't winning your market like you want to.
I don't know of anyone who starts, leads, or joins a company just to be "in the running." Most business leaders have a real passion and energy for winning. They want great customers, outstanding employees, and advocating stakeholders. But in each market, there is only one #1 and there are likely some simple reasons it eludes you.
Missed Fit
When interviewing the 85 founders for the book Beyond Product, what was made clear was most leaders had this idea of where they wanted to go in the market. Think of this as "a solution in search of a problem." Many great ideas are solutions that then go find a market that needs that solution. It is not that these are bad ideas - most are amazing solutions. But they gloss over the product-market fit phase of their growth. It is like starting a roadtrip with the car gassed up, snacks and drinks all packed, playlist loaded, windows down and you leave your place in New York to go find Los Angeles ... and you head north.
You have everything you need, but you are missing on your customer. Who are they and what do they want? Where are they and how do you get to them?
Missed Messaging
Many organizations are still drowning people with what they - the organization, the brand - wants to say. We load our marketplace up with speeds and feeds and product insights. We love the tech or the inner workings of our products. We show off the cool gadgets and hope that if we keep it up, the customer will finally "get it." They will finally buy us.
The biggest challenge here is that we often forget what the customer really needs or wants to hear from us. Are we speaking their language and using terms they understand? Do we speak to their need rather than our need (to get them to buy).
Missed Focus
Organizations go one of two ways on this: we Goldilocks our offerings as either too broad or too narrow. What happens is that way too many offerings/products/services are developed in the market so that we make sure we leave no opportunity behind. Several organizations interviewed for the book had 5-6 products but weren't really sure which ones were meeting the needs of their customers.
Other organizations go the other way and double-down on one single product. They are unwilling to change or evolve. It is often called the "Gambler's Ruin," or more academically called "Sunk Cost Fallacy." The basic idea of these principles is that we have invested all this time and energy into something - and if we pull out now we wont see our return. Nirvana lies just around the corner so let's keep on this path.
Either way here organizations either "put all their eggs in one basket" or go so wide and broad that they never really solve the customers need.
Heal Thyself
When organizations miss their market, or miss how they talk to that market, or misalign on their focus, it is challenging to fix this internally. The lack of objectivity can be a really difficult for most companies. No one wants to tell the founder the bad news, or tell a product team that their solution doesn't work for our customers. But understanding where you really are in the market can be daunting for most teams struggling to figure out their customers.
If you are interested in how you are aligned to your market and if you are poised to win, take the quiz and find out how you fit.