Creating Insanely Great Customers
Chapter 1
Chapter 1. Identifying Your Insanely Great Customers
Priorities
At the top of almost every CEO’s priorities are three things: customer engagement, innovation, and operational efficiency. These things have always been critical, but today we are in a digital storm that’s disrupting entire industries, and most CEOs aren’t happy with their progress. Why? Because companies are addressing these priorities as individual initiatives. The solution? Integrate and align these initiatives in every functional area within the company with a single goal: Help customers become Insanely Great by continually accelerating the breakthrough value delivered to them.
Identifying Insanely Great Customers
Great, now you have the vision! In this sprint, you are going to learn the attributes of Insanely Great Customers, why its important to focus on them, how to identify them and how to incorporate that knowledge into your company’s customer-segmentation process.
Looking for love in all the wrong places?
The customers you want to invest your future in have the same passion you do—an obsession with pushing the world forward by delivering Insanely Great value to their customers. They know the challenge ahead: Staying relevant and competitive requires continuously accelerating the value they create. This is where Creating Insanely Great Customers starts, not with your products. Establish relationships and build products that help customers address this challenge, and they’ll not only keep coming back, they will help take you and your company to the next level.”
Have you seen companies fall in love with their products? They lose sight of their ability to create new breakthrough value for customers, and overlook changes that are taking place in what customers value. For example, RIM/Blackberry once owned the smartphone market. Then they totally ignored and even ridiculed game-changing technologies and business models that were reflecting a shift in what the market demanded. Or Nortel, who created the first digital phone network and dominated the fiber optic market, but then failed to make the shift to IP routers.
The result? These “firms lost some of the most valuable and innovative markets on the planet. Instead of focusing on products, or wringing the last penny out of a functional budget, we need to obsess about our best and brightest customers and their future: what they do, how they do it, why, and how it’s changing. And most importantly, how can we help them be the best at what they do in a continually shifting future? It takes vision and discipline to not get caught up in the day-to-day, and to stay focused on continually accelerating the value we create for customers. But maintaining that focus is what will make tomorrow’s leaders. And the first step is focusing on the right customers.”
Stay friends with your ideal customers. Love your Insanely Great ones.
We were in a meeting at Apple discussing how to build market share among enterprises that were buying PCs. About halfway through, Steve Jobs came in. The longer he listened, the more frustrated he became. Finally, he said, “Look, I don’t give a shit about trying to sell to people who don’t get what we’re doing. They’re a waste of our time. Focus on the ones who get it; they’re the ones we can build a future with.”
It’s easy to love customers who buy a lot, the ones who don’t rock the boat or challenge us. Until now, the “ideal” customers accepted (as a matter of fact, hung on for dear life to) the status quo. They told us how great our product was and accepted—no, demanded—only small, incremental improvements. Customers who hang on to the status quo, refusing to investigate, explore, evaluate, or act on changes being driven by the Perfect Storm, are not the ones who will help you and your company create a vibrant future. In fact, they will destroy it. While it’s OK to stay friends with these customers, they’re not the ones you want to fall in love with.
What makes Insanely Great customers different? They’re crazy!
In a nutshell, Insanely Great customers are the ones like you, who get it. They recognize that remaining “within the status quo is a death sentence. They’re seeking, exploring, and investing in new and different ways to bring value to their own customers. They’re the ones who are on fire. They’ll rattle your cage to get you to bring new thinking, capabilities, and technologies to the mix. They invite you into the mud, the blood, and the beer of what they’re thinking and doing so that you can be part of creating their next Insanely Great breakthrough.
They will also leave you in the dust if you aren’t willing to go on the journey with them. They help you understand where your priorities need to be, and keep you and your team honest and focused on what they and the market will value in the future. Insanely Great customers play big. They innovate in ways that will create breakthrough value, based on future needs. They’re not just investing in product-line or process extensions. They’re investing in things that will transform their customers, their company, and their industry. Increasingly, they are embracing open innovation. They’re joining with partners and customers in facilitated dialogues and processes of mutual continual learning and innovation. Why? Because they know, regardless of how smart or connected they are, that there are smarter, more-connected people outside their company who can help them achieve these breakthroughs better, faster, and smarter.
Do you sense a common trait running through these companies? It’s a relentless focus on understanding, prioritizing, and delivering exceptional customer value in everything they do. They have innovation in their blood and the air they breathe. They are directly aligning:
- Leadership and strategy
- Customer engagement
- Innovation initiatives
- Supporting processes and systems
And they’re connecting these elements over an intelligent, high-speed network. Not one made up of fiber optics and routers (though those help), but a network forged of small, fast-moving teams. These teams are empowered by a vision and a culture that’s obsessed with accelerating the velocity of the customer value they create through continual learning and innovation.
How to find the Insanely Great customers.
Today’s connected world is noisy and full of digital fingerprints. Companies creating the future are visible in social media, at events, and in their customers’ industries or lives. Whether it’s blogs, YouTube presentations, slide presentations, or live events, they are out there. They’re also likely to be reaching out to your sales team, customer service and support teams, or even your senior executives, and rattling their cages. They are on a creative quest, and they’re making a joyful noise. The noise of innovation. Listen to them and join in!
Some customers are striving to be Insanely Great. You can help them get there!
In addition to identifying and working with the customers who already get it, you must also focus on the next segment—customers who are trying to get it. You’ll find them attending presentations, retaining consulting firms, asking questions, and engaging in the social dialogue surrounding the future of their industries.
The number of companies that are starting to get it is growing. You can see evidence in the climbing adoption rates of mobile, cloud, social media, marketing automation, cloud-based computing, and more. Companies increasingly understand the benefits of being in front of the curve and the risks of being behind it, as evidenced by the priorities set by the majority of CEOs captured in studies from organizations like Accenture, IBM, PwC, Fast Company, and more. Customers ready to up their game are hungry for the dialogue of innovation. They are consuming powerful new ideas, useful content, strong business cases, and best practices. Their companies may not yet be ready to go bravely where no one has previously gone, but they’re willing to follow quickly in the footsteps of the Insanely Great.
Invest in customer segments that will drive your future growth.
Most companies are familiar with market or customer segmentation, the process of identifying customer clusters with unique needs and behavioral characteristics that align with a company’s vision, mission, strategy, and product offerings. In today’s market, the process of customer segmentation needs to be Always-On. The Perfect Storm is continually reshaping what customers value. Who your customers were, how they approached things, and what they valued even six months ago have changed. You have to stay on top of these changes, because it’s crucial to know who your Insanely Great customers are, and how what creates value for them is changing. In today’s market, the value the segment places on innovation and where they seek to innovate are key segmentation criteria.”
As you segment your customers more precisely to help them achieve their innovation goals, high-priority areas will emerge where you can make a unique and powerful contribution. These areas are candidates for Always-On Innovation Zones—areas in which creating breakthrough value will accelerate your customer’s growth and transform their company, and yours too.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of the book. Yes you can find it on Amazon
Come listen to topics like this and others from innovative industry leaders at InsurTech FUSION Summit on June 18 -19 in San Francisco.
Stay on top of all the latest InsurTech news and trends on the SVIA blog.
