Let’s Cut Back to One Catalogue
The story isn’t an urban legend. It’s what happens everywhere about this time … or times like this. Budgets are tight or gone. Managers, marketers move from fear rather than from confidence. They don’t believe in the products that once were doing so well and suddenly are not.
The answer is too often some version of …
“Let’s make fewer products. Put out fewer catalogues.”
“Right, why not have only one product and get a single $100Million customer?”“Let’s offer deep discounts”
“And let’s attract price-focused customers and tell our most loyal fans that our products and services aren’t worth the price they’ve been paying.”
See how we manage to make a decline happen?
Managing to Growth
Managing to decline is a subtle of way of uninvesting moved by fear. We actually make our businesses decline and decline faster not supporting our work in the ways above.
Fear is a business killer.
Kill the fear by managing to make growth happen.
Rather than offering fewer products and fewer catalogues,
rather than slashing prices,
make new offers.
- Look to the folks who are already buying what you offer and the folks you would most like to have as customers or clients. Ask them what you might build or offer to serve them. They’ll help you construct what they want.
- Look at what sells and find ways to combine two great products with a new third product to make an entirely different — one that will attract friends of the customers you already have. New products get new prices.
- Look to the experience of using your products or services. What’s making that experience difficult? Remove that. What could you add to make the experience awesome? Add that. You have another new offer.
Businesses grow when they have better products and services that meet more customer needs in more ways. Simple logic right?
Have you been making the decline in your business happen? What are you doing to manage to growth?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
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