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The Chief Outsider
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Recent Posts
Turning Customer Insight into Customer Value
This blog is part of Chief Outsiders’ New Growth Imperative series, designed to help CEOs and leadership teams engage executive decision-makers at targeted strategic accounts by turning deep insights into compelling customer value.
How to Retain Customers and Develop Brand Advocates - Part 1
Fri, Sep 6, 2019 — Part 1 of 3: Why retention marketing should be part of your growth strategy If you are losing customers at almost any rate, you are jeopardizing your business growth strategy. Every lost customer creates a hole that you must fill before you can claim any new customer growth. The more customers you churn, the deeper the gap before you can realize any revenue or profit growth.
Is Subscription Pricing Right for your Business? Four Tests To Reveal the Answer
Wed, Sep 4, 2019 — A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, most consumer enterprises were in the business of selling physical items that could be held, consumed, and bought again. Whether it was a cheeseburger at McDonalds, a quart of milk at the grocery store, or a stamping machine from an industrial supplier, the pricing model was simple: Take the cost to produce, add profit (plus padding for high market demand), and you’re done. Ship one unit, charge for one unit. Simple.
The Millennial Food Shift: How CPG Food Companies Can Rescue Their Market
Wed, Aug 28, 2019 — Never before has the kitchen been so lifeless. For generations, the once-centerpiece of the American home has become much less important – marginalized by Millennials and younger generations who choose to order up their nourishment with a few silent taps of the cell phone rather than the clank of pots and pans. Seemingly overnight, this phase shift in eating habits has roiled the business models of food-oriented consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. They can no longer count on being a key ingredient in the daily lives of today’s consumer. So how did this happen? And what can CPG companies—and the grocery stores that peddle their wares—do to regain mindshare in the public consciousness?
Demand vs. Lead Generation: A Strategic Approach to Creating Highly-Qualified Leads
Tue, Jul 9, 2019 — Generating leads for B2B companies is one of the most important responsibilities of your marketing team. The concept of demand generation vs. lead generation many times are considered the same, or that one philosophy rather than the other should be adopted. Cracking the code of generating highly-qualified leads to grow your business involves the right focus on both demand and lead generation.
Moving to a Blue Ocean With Growth Gears: Five Steps to Chart a Course for Success
Thu, Jun 20, 2019 — Whether you are a seafaring sort or not, it’s fairly intuitive to expect that a peaceful, sparkling, blue ocean is much more navigable than one roiled by rolling tides, scary sea vermin and dangerous storms. This relatable parable constitutes the foundation of “Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing - Proven Steps to Inspire Confidence and Seize New Growth,” a book by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne which provides a series of waypoints by which to guide businesses into calmer seas. I recently successfully led a client through the Blue Ocean Shift process prescribed by Kim and Mauborgne, and realized how well the lessons align with similar ones espoused in “The Growth Gears,” a book authored by my Chief Outsiders colleagues Art Saxby and Pete Hayes. “The Growth Gears” does a terrific job of building a process around how to go from random acts of marketing, to a purpose-based method of marketing an organization, by following three pillars—Insights, Strategy and Execution.
How to Generate Winning Results with PAC
Wed, Jun 19, 2019 — Most of us have heard of the Five P’s of Marketing (Product, Price, Promotion, Place and People) and how getting those right is essential for success. Certainly, all of these have a role and are important, but for small to mid-sized companies, experience shows that PAC is the biggest driver of success. These are: Product Audience Communications Executing well on PAC provides your business with focus and a market-informed approach. The PAC mindset creates a differentiated product and an activating message that reaches those most likely to buy. Consistent revenue and profit growth naturally follow.
Does Your Customer Delight Take Flight?
Mon, Jun 17, 2019 — Let’s assume, like most businesses, that you have a keen focus on pleasing your customers. You have plans, people and policies that ensure you are offering a great experience, and you are doing everything you can to make it easy to do business with you. That’s all well and good -- congratulations! However, it’s important to note that there are brands committed to going beyond “pleasing” their customers -- they are moving up to “delighting” their customers.
Be More Chill: Teaching Us All How to Market with Intention
Wed, Jun 5, 2019 — A wise person once told me that sometimes “no” simply means “not yet.” Easier said than done, particularly in the CPG world, when huge stakes are riding the new products that constitute our company’s lifeblood. Coming from a consumer marketing and product background—working with industry leaders including Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, Lowe’s and Rubbermaid—I encountered many such inflection points when we felt the market was saying “no” to a new product launch. In fact, our modus operandi seemed to be as follows: Build it, push with promises, and pull with traditional media—and then abandon it if it did not immediately hit. But one thing I can say with certainty, particularly in today’s marketplace—the “cut and run” approach is not nearly as universal. Sometimes success requires us to commit to a longer-term relationship with our consumer. And, as we’ll see, the platform of social media can be the soapbox that can turn the spark into a flame.
Don’t Reinvent the Wheel: Seven Simple Steps to Delighting Your Customers
Tue, May 28, 2019 — People pleasing—for as long as there have been sellers and buyers, there have been efforts by sellers to get those buyers coming back for more. If we think all the way back to the dark ages of retailing, we can imagine that there was heavy competition for those stone-chiseled wheels—and certainly the stonemason with the best service (and ratings on Yelp) had the most robust business. Of course, most businesses will SAY that THEY have a keen focus on delighting their customers—that THEY are the best at building retention and ongoing loyalty. “Of course we do,” they say. “It’s a company virtue! We’ve been doing it for years!” Yet, when you examine the actual processes and procedures used in the interaction with their customers, you will often find the opposite. This is not necessarily willful—it likely is a function of a reliance on tried and true business processes in a selling environment when the business situation may have changed. (Pity the stonemason who was beat out by Goodyear to put rubber treads on those wheels!)