Your Business's Magic Pill, Part 3: Large Existing Businesses

Often, a business can get overwhelmed by the dynamic nature of delivering a product or service while also performing all requisite tasks for its delivery — i.e. the business part of your business.

I was recently joined by over 250 entrepreneurs and executives from all over the world interested in uncovering the Magic Pill in their businesses- that perfect formula that could take their organization to new heights.

Participants fell evenly into three categories: those at the helms of startups, those running small and mid-sized established companies, and those looking to innovate large existing businesses.

To begin each was asked if there was a difference between what they’re good at, what they like to do (or believe that they’re doing), and what makes them money.

They wondered how can they align corporate performance with consumer expectations all while growing profits?

Come along while we work to deconstruct their businesses and distill the few items that matter most and those that can make all the difference this year and for years to come. You may recognize some tactics that could impact your business…

Our last installment, The Large & Established Businesses.

What is the best approach to align corporate performance with consumer expectations while growing profits? @Mirjana

Well, this is a highly nuanced question, but let me attempt to summarize for you here @Mirjana.

First, you must create internal systems and energy around delivering exactly what your customer is expecting. You need to build awareness for it in every facet of what you do, mentioned prior to each meeting, and reinforced across all appropriate platforms. This could even include your compensation strategy. Ruthlessly strip away peripheral interests that could confuse your team about what you deliver. Find elegant solutions to that end, those that deliver the highest impact with the least energy invested. Once your team -from leadership on down- has the customer experience in mind at all times, you’re closer to internal alignment.

Once you have simplified your strategy and ops, you must 1.) clearly tell the customer what to expect from your brand, and 2.) elicit feedback from them to understand any gaps that may exist.

Messaging your corporate narrative effectively is vitally important or else you allow your customers to interpret their experience based only on their expectations, which leaves room for disconnect. To that end, it’s important to seek out, and listen to, feedback so you can identify where you may be delivering an experience different from the one you’ve told your customer to expect. Once armed with that data, you can course correct what isn’t working and double down on what is.

Now tie the experience to profits and motivate your customer to share their experience and to recruit new customers. If you sell cars, the experience you deliver is not the car that you sell, but the interface time at the dealership. Create an experience that wows your consumer and you’ll move more cars. If you make video games, create an amazing experience -great storylines, adequate challenges, quick load times, easy and intuitive progress save structure, and replay-ability- and you’ll move a ton of product.

Yes, investments in advertising or partnerships can drive profits in the short-term, but if there are disconnects in the consumer expectations for your product and what it delivers, you may be investing in exposing those disconnects. Investments in the experience drive profits long-term which can be accelerated by marketing and partnerships.

How can a business keep up with, and catch up to, competitive technological and market threats? @Usman

Another great question @Usman. Every company expends resources to produce value. However, knowing where and when to spend and how to spend wisely can separate the category leaders from the rest of the pack.

My suggested focus points would be: 1.) your customer, 2.) your team, talent or core competencies, and 3.) emerging tech and concepts that can simplify or automate.

While constant competitive analysis can give you a sense of where your rivals are now, it’s tough to see where they are going, or if they are even headed in the right direction. You risk spending time and money on playing catch up or chasing what will very soon be yesterday’s innovations.

If Apple would’ve stayed focused on out-building their competitors’ computer or, later, their competitors’ digital music player, they may not have transformed the mobile phone space and reached a much broader audience. What they began with was a relevant personal computer, but by no means were they outperforming the competition. Apple looked to see how they could give their customer what they truly wanted: freedom. How could they untether them from the desk or office? They looked at what their customer was already accustomed to carrying in the pocket — a music player and/or a mobile phone. By understanding what their customer wanted, they innovated to that desire and transformed their brand.

Likewise, Amazon built an online marketplace first for books but then looked to see how they could take their existing talent and expand the platform. They asked: what else could our team or brand deliver? Once they thought beyond books, the sky was the limit. Today, you’d never think of Amazon’s contemporary competitors as book retailers, would you?

At the same time, you need to keep your head up to capture what bigger trends will impact your industry. Automate where you can, whether supply chain or task management. Take a look at Electronic Medical Records (EMR) integration in the healthcare field -perhaps a bigger impact over the last 25 years than any one innovation in therapy or advancement in the education of care givers.

So, build an awareness for competitive performance, but spend time focused on your customer and what they desire beyond your product; search for new ways to apply your product or solution that your competitors haven’t thought of; and keep an eye on industry-shifting tech or applications that can give you an advantage.

How can a business leverage its operations to gain more buying power and upgrade their selling and marketing systems? @Silvia

Well @Silvia, operational proficiencies are very important to a business. Each one has finite number of resources. Its people have only so much talent, energy, and focus. While the availability of capital has caps and costs which can limit marketing access and impressions and that company’s ability to invest in R&D or react to the marketplace.

In many successful companies, the role of an operations team or department is to implement systems that drive efficiencies to manage resources. By working closely with leadership in both sales and marketing (and accounting), ops leadership should understand the main goal of brand, the needs of its customer, and the capabilities of its team. From that vantage point, the best suggested execution strategies can be developed.

The key question should sound something like this: How do we drive better results and at lower costs while supplying our teams with what they need to deliver our solution without negatively impacting timelines or quality?

At key gateways the progress and performance can be monitored, and adjustments made. While operations may seem like a rigid set of systems and principles, it should be implemented with a fluidity that allows for real time edits and redirection of resources.

When executed well, it will appear choregraphed and complementary to all other divisions within the business.

Keep the curiosity of a forever-learner and the patience of a sage teacher and you will leverage your operational infrastructure to drive resources into your sales and marketing systems.

If you have been quietly building a solid company, how can you receive significantly favorable press and industry buzz? @Dennis

Great question @Dennis. Becoming adept at engaging relevant press outlets is super important in today’s business landscape. It all starts with owning your narrative. You must demonstrate the unique path and the passion it’s taken to build your solid company. Corporate storytelling is term used to describe the sophisticated weaving of a few elements into your compelling, and differentiating, value proposition. Those elements include your origin story, your why and your personal connection to the product or solution that you’ve developed, how you serve or give back to your community, along with evidence of your product’s performance, customer testimonials, employee feedback and commitment, and sometimes price or performance comparisons with established alternatives.

Once you’ve developed your narrative, the next step is a messaging launch strategy.

Press release distribution platforms like PRWeb and PRNewswire (and others) are key for press pickups, but if you hope to garner actionable engagement, you’ll want to drive your reader (media outlets, consumers, investors, etc.) somewhere for more information; a platform where you’ve laid out your narrative.

You will need to dial in your digital footprint. Tighten up your website and decide which social platforms you’re most likely to leverage. YouTube is perhaps the only must have in my opinion. Of course, others will be important as well. Create splash pages (landing pages) and be sure that you have continuity and cohesion across all consumer touchpoints.

Next, develop press releases as well as a more in depth, white-paper style deep dive into you company. I would suggest video content that stars key leadership, employees and talent, partnerships (where applicable), and satisfied and engaged customers. Create two hype videos, one at 2 minutes and another at 7–10 minutes in length. Create 4–5 dryer(content-wise), 1–2-minute videos about who you are, how you do what you do, how you hope to transform your market, and one focused on customer feedback. Remember that you have the advantage of having built and refined your deliverables.

Identify the trade publications that matter most in your industry and those that matter most to your target customer. Identify bloggers and podcasters active in your space. Target publications in your region and key markets where you’d like to grow. Building meaningful, productive relationships across these areas can take time, but can pay off in mentions and amplify your reach.

If possible, consider a high profile reveal at a key location or visible calendar event related to your product. For example, if your focus is the auto industry, consider a press event in Detroit with the city’s history as a backdrop. Can you coordinate timing with the Detroit Car show? If in the tech sector, can you get to the Bay Area or New York? SXSW Conference or Consumer Electronics shows? Energy sector, Houston, etc. Travel is not necessary, especially if cost prohibitive, but you may be able accelerate market penetration or grab a few key relationships for distribution.

Good luck. I’m pulling for you.

How do you effectively use your reputation for trust and solid value to acquire more market share? @Katrina

Great question @Katrina. Luckily, you’ve already done the hard part which was building the reputation for being trustworthy and delivering value. The next piece, while requiring some sophistication, requires considerably less heavy lifting.

First, identify what you’ve done to, and how you have, establish the reputation that you have. Then commit to some related non-negotiables in order to steer clear of diluted deliverables with increased market share. It’s almost cliché when a brand scales for growth and leaves their core customers behind as they swap quality controls for mass production. In my experience The North Face and Jeep are two brands who lost brand trust while trying to gain market share. Both seem to have recommitted to quality in recent years. However, reestablishing trust once it’s broken is considerably more expensive than building it to begin with.

Now, look at where you think you can win in your market segment. Is there a key partnership or platform from which you can increase reach and accelerate growth? Is there a competitor who is losing market credibility and share from whom you could gain? Perhaps an acquisition strategy should be considered. Your track record makes your business a good investment, leverageable for both traditional and non-traditional lenders to fund expansion through acquisition.

For more organic market growth, see my answer above to @Dennis about building a narrative and generating buzz through press outlets. Double down on trade publications and look for partnerships that could bring you to a broader audience or open new markets for you.

Beyond that, you’ve been delivering value for long enough that you should be able to start calling in some favors. In an honest and tasteful manner, reach out to your most committed customers and partnerships and leverage those relationships for more opportunity. Ask them: are there distribution partners, suppliers, customer groups, or publications where your product would do well at serving more clients? Can they introduce you to anyone who could spark productive conversations? Where can they see you doing well and whom should you be talking to? Some suggestions will bear fruit. Others will not.

Grab testimonials from everyone to whom you’ve demonstrated value. Overwhelm the market with messaging about how you go about your business. Be sure to deliver you standard, above average experience with each curious prospective customer. Continue to earn trust and complete the cycle of new customer to satisfied customer to brand evangelist. In time, you’ll grow market share.

I’m excited for you!

Can a business effectively use their long-standing reputation for solid value to acquire more market share? How? @Mahesh

Yes, I think so. However, the devil, as they say, is in the details. Reputation is a key component of Corporate Storytelling (see previous article). And while many companies may be attempting to build a track record, and still others hoping to repair one, those companies who have a history of quality performance and satisfied customers have an enormous advantage. Still, they must message and leverage it accordingly.

I would recommend a twofold approach.

First, engage your customers. Yes, collect testimonials and let your satisfied clients educate potential new ones about what to expect from your team and products. But I suggest that you take it a step further. Have someone with some sales savvy and standing within your organization reach out to your top 10–15 clients and ask them why they do business with you. You may hear a bit of the old standards ‘the price is right,’ or ‘we can count on you.’ But beyond that, you’ll hear some very personal and passionate reasons. Those are the intangibles that set you apart. List those and create a targeted campaign to acquire more points of sale and better market share.

Second, tell your story. Tell the market why you do what you do for as long as you have been doing it. Talk about your origin story. Talk about the need for innovation along the way. Talk about the ups and downs. The generational influences of key leadership and family members (if applicable). Tell them why you’re still passionate about delivering your solution after so many years.

Methods like these, when used properly, should create an emotional draw that both drives new customer engagement and reinforces current client loyalty. Good luck!

How do you get your team to embrace agile methods beyond just software development? How do you stay lean? @Blarts

Ah, how do we influence change and how do we inspire a team to buy-in? I think almost every leader has wrestled with these questions. My take on your two questions is that they are two sides of the same coin. If I may, I’ll rephrase:

How do we build a culture wherein our team strives for operational efficiency, is interested in consistently doing the little things well, and is open to a shifting set of resources to complete their tasks?

In order to have a team that embraces new or agile methods and out of the box thinking, you may need to take a deeper look at all levels of team engagement and development starting with recruiting and interviewing and flowing through training, mentoring, and compensation.

Once you’ve begun hiring for talent with a familiarity or comfort with problem solving and efficiency, you’ll have the building blocks. However, if you never again address the importance of embracing those agile methods, its focus during recruiting and interviewing loses its effectiveness. Therefore, be sure to reinforce during the onboarding process and in weekly/daily meetings and training that the whole team -and each individual- will be evaluated based on their creativity in problem solving. Through these methods, the team will understand that it’s important to you. But how do we get them to see how crucial lean processes and systems are to each other and each client?

Read my following answer to @Hammad’s question about cultivating connectedness without discouraging autonomy.

Good luck!!

How do you cultivate connectedness without discouraging autonomy? @Hammad

What a great question @Hammad. I think many companies -and employees for that matter- are intrigued and challenged by the dynamics of individual performance within a team culture or atmosphere.

It is important to communicate and celebrate the interconnectedness of every role within the team as well as the role that each play in delivering the solution to your consumer. While this may sound like a mouthful, I think we can easily break it down into two key narratives that your team can buy into and your leadership can champion.

First, you must get very familiar with the end result. What is it that you are delivering to your customer? Most likely, the ‘product’ is not the desired result. Do you simplify your customers’ life and free them to invest time in their families or the things that they are passionate about? Do you enhance their productivity allowing them to reach new levels of financial freedom or community status? Do you allow them to overcome a significant challenge, developmental restriction, or medical concern?

If you are unsure, bring a number of end users into the fold to help explain the positive outcomes of your team’s output. This exercise will help the team to see the bigger picture.

Next, highlight the interdependence of each position within the greater whole. I really like the analogy of organs within an organism. Each organ has a specific task that must be performed in order for the whole to run effectively and efficiently. What’s more, none of the individual organs has a purpose without the collective. And remove any one organ or system and the entire organism will fail after a time. Now, discuss how each organ can run more efficiently and each has a responsibility to improve their own output to the benefit of the whole team. This should inspire more collaboration and innovation within departments and individual cubicles.

One last thought is that many sales focused organizations champion individual performance and compensate accordingly. While B Corps or NPO/NGOs may be hyper-focused on general output. Each may be able to learn from the other in driving ingenuity from individuals within a team-first mindset.

How can a large business fully harness marketing and innovation opportunities? @Mahmoud

Great question. First, one must be aware of those opportunities in order to act.

Yes, a business should develop tactics and sophistication in both messaging and innovation specific to their product set, but they should also work to understand and target tactics and methods specific to their intended consumer.

Make an effort to understand where the market for your product is going, how your target customers are innovating, and where they are consuming information and messaging.

Reach out to your best clients and have a relaxed conversation about their strategies and where they hope that your company or product can assist. Then, reach out to any clients you may have lost recently and have a similar conversation. What were they hoping that they would’ve received from your business or product. What was the cause of their departure? Next, find a way to meet with 2–3 of your dream clients and absorb what you can of their strategy and needs.

From the information collected you should be able to ascertain where your market is headed, what the gaps and needs are, and where to place your messaging.

Also, reach out to 5–10 of the leading minds in your field and pose a similar set of questions. You’ll gain an objective, possibly higher-level perspective and should be able to begin to plan along a longer market timeline. I would suggest a simple and authentic direct message effort for these contacts- try Twitter. Ask them for a meeting over a cup of coffee. After all, even the most prestigious guru was a beginner once and needed guidance and mentoring.

Once you have gained the information, develop a plan to capture the imaginations of your team (to innovate your product) and your customer (to drive engagement)!

Best of luck!

What’s the most effective way for our large company to remain a driving force in our field? -Jennifer

Good question. If it isn’t, you must first make being a driving force in your field an integral part of your daily mission. And that starts with communicating it to your team early and often. If they understand that, alongside customer satisfaction, profitability, and developing a fulfilling team environment, your company desires to be an industry leader, they will make different daily choices. You may want to start each team meeting by reinforcing that industry leadership is a desired outcome at all times and in all efforts.

Next, I’d build a network of thought leaders and futurists (people with a long view) both in your field and those generally related to your field. From this network you can start to build a vision and drive for the future. In order to be that driving force, you must either lead change or be active in a space where the rest of your community will end up.

Finally, think about building a messaging strategy that positions your company/brand as a thought leader itself. Then churn out content. Talk about existing challenges and propose solutions. Imagine what the next industry iterations and innovations will be; which extraneous or superfluous products or mindsets will be the first to become obsolete. Offer insights drawn directly or indirectly from the conversations and collaboration with the network that you’ve built. Put some of these elements into your product design. Eventually, you will become a significant voice and driving force within your field.

How can large companies speed up their experimentation/iteration cycle? -Dejean

Interesting question @Dejean. Companies may look to speed that learning cycle in order to adapt or abandon assumptions as they are proved or contested in the process.

There is a relatively new idea of failing quickly in order to iterate and evolve. I’m a fan of being open to failure and learning from it. However, while failure and knowledge/wisdom can at times have a direct relationship: the more you experience the one, the more of the other that you gain, I think it unwise to be too frivolous with resources.

Jeff Bazos was asked how Amazon has been able to grow exponentially in a tech and eCommerce space where everyone else is also pushing for growth. He said that they bring the smartest people together on a project and work until they have 70% certainty and then they launch. The team knows that as long as they keep the consumer and the desired result in mind at all times, they can course correct once the product is being tested by the market. To wait until the team has 80% or 90% certainty could allow someone else to beat them to market. And 100% certainty is virtually impossible.

Here are my two suggestions:

In order to speed your experimentation process you must first be very clear about what you’re hoping to learn or deliver. Distill the deliverable down to its simplest form. If you can adjust for known variables and make some assumptions based on market or environmental familiarity, you may able to accelerate. However, understand that each assumption comes with an element of risk.

Stay unemotional about outcomes. Don’t get too attached to any one iteration or bogged down when multiple failures occur. Emotional reaction or attachment can cause a loss of time. If you can, have an unbiased team stress test each experiment or have two teams compete to first build a solution and then disprove the other’s.

Learn, ruthlessly at times, about your teams’ incorrect assumptions or even their limitations. Keep moving forward. That should speed things up a bit.

What is the best approach for globally distributed teams to work together? @Kim

We live is such an amazing and exciting time for far flung, remote, and even global teams @Kim. Of course, proximity is beneficial, but while leading a team that cannot be immersed within a single culture can be tricky, I think tech, like video conferencing, is a remedy.

Communication is frequently a remedy for many challenges that a team may face.

As humans, we tune into, and rely on, nonverbal communication when working together. As we remove nonverbal elements — first visual moving from video to conference call and then vocal timbre through simple email or text- we do lose a lot. Especially when we may already be challenged with the added language or cultural dynamics of global teams.

Staying connected through one of the many platforms available -Skype may be the category leader, but others may be more appropriate or effective for your business- can enhance empathy and team relations and overall outcomes.

Global teams may also benefit from sensitivity training (not a term that I love, but it will work here) or at least time invested in getting to know what the ups and downs, highs and lows, and lifestyle realities are that each subset enjoy and represent.

Why is it important to have mentoring programs at large companies? What are the benefits? @Parvez

Mentoring programs are worthwhile as they are an investment that pays dividends in nearly every aspect of your company (see previous article on Mentorship Part 1 & Part 2). Indeed, when you’ve created an effective mentorship mindset and program, you’ll see improvements in customer satisfaction, employee engagement and fulfillment, creativity, recruiting, attendance, and collaboration.

However, the areas where one can anticipate the biggest jump is in overall productivity and the continuation of leadership principles and corporate values.

Mentors will feel that their experience and knowledge is valued and utilized while mentees will be given the tools necessary to learn, fail, and succeed with the guidance of the mentor.

Be aware that if your company is starting a mentor program today, tangible evidence will not be visible immediately, and rolling out the program may be met with resistance — especially if your team is generally overwhelmed or demoralized. Stay committed to the process. Encourage all involved to embrace and lean into the program. You should feel progress in the energy and interactions within your office before you see results on paper.

Dial into those previous articles on Mentorship listed above for more of the how’s, why’s, and gameplans.

— — — — —

I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading along and that you’ll allow me to bend your ear again in the chapters where we discuss small, medium, and large established businesses.

I want to hear your feedback and I am eager to learn from each of you. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

The views expressed in replies are my own but have been influenced by years of collaboration with many amazing people along with a willingness to fail and to learn.

Best,

Cliff Carey