The Benefits of Customer Insight

Most of my clients reckon they know their customers really well. My experience is that they don't and in difficult times this is an opportunity.

Two tools to gain real customer insight are the customer perception survey and value gap analysis.

Customer perception surveys conducted properly always create new insights which can be translated into new business opportunities. Value gap analysis reviews the things along the customer journey from initial enquiry through to paying the bill that customers value and will pay for.

The insights are:

- are we selling the value customers want?
- Do we deliver the value well?
- Can we cut out things they don't value and reduce our costs?

Both these tools add real value to businesses. Contact us for more information on 01430 425541 or e-mail david@davidhalluk.com

The Business Growth Dilemma......

I have consulted with a number of companies over the past few years and have noticed a pattern of problems they face in trying to grow. They develop a recipe for success which enables them to grow to a level. Their recipe gets embedded into their culture and they enjoy a period of success.....

Then they want to kick on and go to the next level and try to achieve that by doing more of the same. The dilemma is they have created a way of doing things which usually needs to change but their culture is so fixed it cannot change. What made them successful now holds them back. This can be seen particularly when they are trying to enter new markets or develop new products.

A solution that works is to introduce new processes that enables them to behave differently as a business. These include:

Conducting a customer perception survey in order to identify strengths and weaknesses that can be leveraged or addressed.

Building a new business generating system including networking, intelligence gathering and being entrepreneurial in winning work.

The concept of working on the business as a team in order to challenge and change it.

Finding and empowering their entrepreneur within.

Changing the strategy and culture, particularly values.

The key is that the leaders of the business must act as role models and champion the new desired processes and behaviours.

When businesses take these issues seriously they can grow successfully.

Want to be like the best businesses in the UK?

I am very proud that my No.1 consulting client over the past 30 years Keepmoat have become one of the most successful businesses in the UK.

Keepmoat track record:

Past 7 years profit 10% (nearest competitor 3%)

Less than 20 businesses out of 3 million in the UK including Keepmoat have improved profits by a minimum 10% every year, 10 years consecutively.

Average profit improvement in the UK over 10 years is 3.4 times. Keepmoat 24 times!

If you want your business to become as good as the best call me for a discussion on how to do it.

David Hall Consultancy Ltd
01430 425541

Customerising Revisited

Back in 1992 I researched how 30 businesses in the North East of England undertook marketing. I discovered that they did not use traditional formal marketing methods as taught by business schools.

Their approach was much more informal and personal based on networking, building customer relationships, growing by solving customer problems and above all doing that bit extra and delighting customers.

This insight was so different from big business marketing I coined a new phrase to describe it; customerising.

I discovered in 2000 that customerising is the way entrepreneurs start and build successful businesses yet customerising is still not part of business school marketing programmes - why?

Maybe that is because really successful small entrepreneurial firms are too busy making money to be concerned with the 4 'P's, the marketing mix and all that marketing jargon.

Perhaps business schools and academics should go and look at what successful entrepreneurs actually do as I did 20 years ago.... they might then be able to teach their students something useful.

How effective CEOs earn their money.......

The average tenure of a new CEO is now less than 5 years and 40% last less than 2 years......

So how does a CEO add real value to a business?

In my view they have four things to focus upon and do well:

1. Set the strategy of the enterprise

What business are we really in? Where are we going? What do we need to focus upon to create success?

2. Pick the right people capable of delivering the strategy

Easier said than done sometimes.... but CEOs should not compromise on this task. The problem is that really high performers are around 0.1% of people...... where are they?

3. Set and champion the preferred culture

You get culture by design, or by default if you don't manage it.

4. Prioritise and focus on the key strategic actions that will deliver the strategic goals

Usually there are 4/6 key things to do well.

These priorities apply to both private and public sector organisations.....

It's called LEADERSHIP.