Bringing new Ideas to Market

We have all gone through the process of creating new business ideas for IKEA, some in service & some in products themselves.

The design thinking process from Stanford University is an excellent tool.

Having understood the company & who the target audience is, we observe as to what they do. We define our product or service. We now ideate as to which product or service would best suit the brand. From here we filter down all the ideas for each project, marketable, ethical. cost of manufacturer, ease of use, desirable, price, durability & maintenance. I would also add another one on if there were after sales or would there be add on products or licencing agreements.

The next stop in choosing the product should in my opinion come down to the economic logic of the product, or in other words is it financially viable and can we make a profit. If we are happy that our product will make a profit, we must now test the product or service. Use prototypes so all the members of the team can look at what the final product will look like, or to make sure we are all singing off the same hymn sheet.

The next stage is to project manage the product or service to make sure that all the arenas, vehicles, staging & differentiators have been thought out,, planned  & they are being managed through every process.

Throughout my career I have managed several projects, Anything from €20k to €1m. What I have learned is to well plan all of them as in most cases I also had my normal duties to conform with. Planning was everything, I include risk management in the planning as you never know what could go wrong, it was always essential to have contingency plans in place.

The most enjoyable part of any project is the launch of the product, service or even a new branch. Choosing what forms of media to use to suit you market segmentation is always the "fun" part of project. I went with many variations, Mail shots, Leaflet drop, inserts in newspapers, magazines,  Digital mail shots, radio, celebrity openings, Google ad words, Ad placements on web sites, Facebook, local newspapers & national newspapers. I have been very lucky as we always had great success. This was down to  meticulous planning & in choosing which media suits your target audience.

Below is a picture of Niall Quinn & myself who cut the ribbon at one of our openings.

Regards,
BIP/ SO'D

How Much?

This week the "How Much" week we looked at pricing, which I think is an art form in itself. Pitch too low and you are giving away margin, too high may scare the market away. It is an extremely difficult subject to get right.

When bringing a new product to the market you do not know what the demand is like,  where do we set our stall. Do we go for market penetration and mass produce the product and settle for small margins, or go for break even to start until it hopefully take momentum . If we pitch too low it is difficult to get back up. Do we limit supply so we can get a premium for the product. If  you have a commodity product , bread , milk, ham etc. there is price transparency I certainly think you must be in and around the market price. That unless of course you have a USP, (Unique selling Price) which you get push for a higher selling price.

There are other factors to be considered as well, is there future sales a great example is on printers where the sell the printer at a low price & make up for this on the ink cartridges. Razor blades would be another great example of this. Is your brand strong enough to demand high price, through emotional value maybe. Will there be first to get the product demand, a great example would be when Apple introduce a new product, they have customer querying to be first to have their products. They even get it wrong when the pitched the ipad too high & reduced it by $200 within two  months. The first people in were very disgruntled that this led to vouchers being given out in compensation. This type of demand is generally seen as the exception

During my career when we were pricing a new range I always took a two pronged approach on commodity range. We always bought in large volumes, we would put an introductory price to the trade to try & get market penetration. On the retail side we set it at a premium as a new range. If we were first to the market with a new range a premium was set across the board as it was unique to us. We would advertise the unique selling points & generally put the range "up in lights" so everyone would be aware of the new range.

I also learned very quickly on who to ask when pitching a price. We had brought in a new range it had a very different colour to what we had & to what was in the market. By all accounts it looked like we might be on to something with this. To do market research we showed it to our experienced sales team on the counter of our flag ship branch.. I remember very distinctly one of the team looking at the new line and stating immediately that we would have to sell at 15% margin. This would have been particularly low for any range let alone a new one. I enquired how he could make his assumption based on the fact that I had not told him how much the product cost.  His blank look said it all, this lead me down a whole new path on margin protection,  I had to come up some very clever strategies to protect the margins across several  product lines.  As it turned out it was one of the best lines we brought in & we did get a premium price for it.

To finish on pricing there are also other parts of the equation to be looked at, price fixing, predatory pricing, deceptive pricing, & price discrimination. I think we all get caught out when buying things drinks at concerts etc. I remember getting caught out,  I would stay in a hotel a few times a year in Galway as the company I worked for had a branch down there, the room was approx. €60 . I had to go down & stay overnight to implement a changeover on software, it was country wide roll out and required us to work through the night with a consultant. It was planned well in advance as you also had to book the consultants time well in advance. Little be known to us that & it was the Galway Race week. Because of the demand our room went from €60 per night to €195 per night. Lesson learned timing is everything.

 

Regards,

BIP/ SO'D

The Value of Customer Services & Relationships

The value of customer services & customer relationships is a subject which I feel very strongly about. I just read the case study on Shredbank in Belfast. ( Foundations of Marketing). They were very adapt in honing in on the whole customer experience, they went to great lengths to get to know their customers. They instilled it into all of their staff that customer relationships was the very core of their business. I loved the idea of giving the bigger customers cup cakes with their logo on them, giving a treat & getting the brand across is brilliant.

I had the great privilege to listen to the charming and wonderful  Richard Hammond during a corporate conference. He was the afternoon speaker at the conference, the dreaded slot. He was entertaining, witty & had great examples. We all got copies of his book "Smart Retail" afterwards, having listened to him speak so entertainly I decided that I would have to read his book. Anyone that is considering in getting into retail or managing a sales team this is a must read. One of the points that always stood out on the book, was a quote make your team happy & they will make you money.  I also subscribe to the happy workforce will bring in better results.

He gave a great example from Boots in Oxford. There are three shops selling the Clinique brands, high end make-up, (please excuse my vague description I have never used the product) . By all accounts a very lucrative market to be in, with good margins. All the shops sell for the same price, the product is marketed / displayed identically. The reason is for Boots outselling Debenhams & Alders is down to the salesperson. Beverly works on the counter in Boots, she knows the product inside out. She remembers the customers by their name & she also remembers their skin tones. On top of this she is very friendly & will always say hello to the customers when passing even if they are not buying from the make-up department. She never pushes the sale & has built up a great trust with her customers. Her exceptional customer service is a great example of how customer relationships can benefit a company.

In a previous life I managed the biggest customer that we ever had. The account had turnover over €7m in about five years. I had started the account off with a limit of €2k, we had built it up with time. I met the owner every week to iron out any issues that he would have on service, price & on the account. I would have also helped him with HR &  legal issues. My theory was to have him concentrate on selling & I would look after some admin that he needed help with. We built up a great relationship & he even invited me to his wedding.  It was not always plain sailing I could on occasion get a phone call being lifted out of it for something that had gone wrong with a delivery or a product defect. I would always start the conversation with calm down tell me what it is & I will fix it. Generally I would, it might take a courier to collect from another branch around the country, or if it was in Dublin I would go get it myself. There had been occasions that he was overcharged, I investigated & gave him the credit immediately, in fact I sometimes gave him more if I found more while investigating the first query. I always found that you can not always get it right in a large company, but when it went wrong deal put your hand up & deal with the issues immediately. It was down to great customer services that he stuck with us as we sold in a very competitive market. Ironically when I was made redundant he called me and wanted to close the account. I suguested that he did not and look after his own business which he was still driving it forward. I passed the account onto a good friend in the company & asked him to follow my lead on customer service. We still keep in touch today.

 I also remember attending a funeral of a customer who's father had passed away. We did have the occasional spat over the account falling into arrears but had great respect for each other. I went over to him at the funeral & we embraced. He thanked me for coming & he said in business you have relationships, thats what business was about. People buy from people not companies. He was so right.

Regards,

BIP / SO'D

Perseverance Week

Perseverance, it took Edison one thousand attempts to create the light bulb, when asked how did he feel in getting it wrong one thousand times, he replied that it he did not get in wrong but it was a one thousand step process to create the light bulb. What a fantastic way to think. James Dyson had thousands of goes to get  his vacuum cleaner to work, it was his sheer persistence and determination that evolved into a billion euro company.

I was employed by a company that was part of a rather large PLC., when it came to the year 2k, we were not sure that out IT system would be able to cope with the fears that had accompanied the year 2k. The system was out dated & needed to be replaced. It was decided that we would join the IT system of the holding company. I was given the task of project manager on our end, I mentioned that I knew something about computers & was landed with the job to be exact. The roll out went fine & we rolled it out over a weekend by working through the night. We had done our homework we had test systems in place, training had been completed all the comms were working & tested before we went live. The working through the night was taking the live information from one system to the other across all the branches. Overall it went well & it was rewarding to see the whole thing up  working correctly after all the effort that we had put into it.

As part of the exercise I had become familiar with the holding companies IT system & how many customers they had. They had thousands of trade customers on the system far more that we had, even up to ten times more. We could see their customers on the system if we done a global search. I came up with the idea that we would offer all the holding companies customers credit facilities with us subject to their accounts being in terms. The plan was that they could use their accounts that they already had on the system  in our branches. Now having such an innovating idea can have its problems, can we cross sell to other companies & who will collect the money, were the two big issues. I could have walked away from the idea but I knew there was value in this, so I persisted. We went to CEO of the holding who thought it was a great idea & would allow us to cross sell. The next thing to deal with was the collection of monies. It was agreed that the accounts would be treated the same & the credit controller would collect the money as normal. If an account turned into a bad debt we would take the hit for the debts.

So we now have a green light to cross sell. How would we get the message out there to almost twenty thousand customers. If we post everything out the postage bill alone will be close to €10k. I approached the idea of sending the letter of offer with the holding customers statements. That meant I would only have to pay for the letter that I was sending out & more importantly it would go with the holding companies statement run so you could very quickly see the connection between the two companies. As part of the letter I put a fax back on the letter for further details. We got permission that we could do this & we sent the letter to the print house to be printed. The statements & letters went out within a couple of weeks. When the letters went out our fax machine was on over time within the first  week I would say we had over three hundred enquiries looking for information. The whole thing cost less than one thousand euros to print. We had pulled in over €750k in year one. I ran this a couple of times a year & we were over €3m by year three. It cost less a couple of thousand a year to run but I have never seen such a great return on investment as with this campaign. I knew that there was money in this & it was through sheer persistence that pulled it over the line.

I would subscribe to what Melrona spoke about in psychological capital or the power of positive thinking. I leave you with the quote from Henry Ford & a graph on attitude.

Regards,

BIP / SO'D.

Week Four - The Blair which Project

.
Another great week in the land of BIP, week 4 already and how the weeks are flying in. As its coming up to Halloween I have named week four at BIP the Blair Which Project

In Digital Marketing we learned about brand association, there was a great example of the Volkswagen Beatle, before the re-launch of the Beatle if you drove the old model, you could not pass one that was broken down without giving assistance. Then there was Levi's who were associated with the young & trendy, what happened was we all got older. We also kept wearing them so the jeans were no longer young & trendy. Now who would like to wear the same jeans as their parents when they were a teenager. They became even more out of fashion when the British prime Minister Tony Blair   decided to wear them to look cool. As a result of this & to Levi's detriment the jeans became no longer cool. We also found out that you have to be very careful when naming your brand, Naoimh gave a great examples  Fiat who named their car Nova, which translates to won't go in some languages. I loved the Irish Mist example for the Irish Cream Liqueur  drink, mist translates to "dung" in Germany.  Not that's very appetising is it.


We met the team from Harmonics for the first time. It was interesting to hear John speak of his own personal experiences in such an open manner. I am sure that like John we have been told something in the past, that we were no good at something &  we actually carry this belief with us for a long time. I found it intriguing in finding out what I actually enjoy doing on the skills matrix. I have had such a varied career that I was unsure as to what I wanted to do next. It certainly looks like I have ticked a lot of the boxes under "P" for people/interpersonal skills. It will be very interesting as to Which career path I will follow next & will I be using the P's.

I am engrossed with David in our  Project management lecture's, very entertaining, what knowledge & a fantastic sense of humour as well. Fail cheap & fail quickly, not forgetting to look at the background, opportunity & risk, as well as the scope of the project. Or the insight: plan & implementation of project management. I thought about if I had been as honest in telling my masters in the past that a programme would fail before we got it off the ground would I have still held my position?  I think there is logic in both. We also learned if you want to get a medal in the US Navy, all you have to do in loose a wrench on an Aircraft Carrier. (Tongue in Cheek!!)

In Marketing we learned about repositioning, who remembers that old Lucozade Bottle with the plastic around them, I think every patient that I visited in hospital seemed to have bottles of this around their bedsides. Lucozade repositioned their brand fantastically by having their target audience as perceiving them as a sports drink instead of being a drink for the sick.

 

Red Bull also repositioned their brand, they were known in the club / disco scene as giving a great lift. They introduced a new campaign that "Red Bull gives you wings". They now opened the same product to a different market similar to what Lucozade done.

Hyundai repositioned their brand, they had always been perceived as the economy brand, cheap price, cheap car. When they began to offer extended the warranty (ten years or 100k miles)  now became known as the reliable brand  or value for money.

There are several ways to reposition your brand

To give examples of this....

Guess who is presenting on repositioning on Tuesday.


Regards,

BIP/ SO'D

Week 3 - The Unseen / hidden Week

Another great week in the land of BIP.

The unseen / hidden week.

Who ever would have thought of the effort that goes into playing the Tom & Jerry theme music, a full orchestra, wow!  I certainly could not have seen this. It puts the whole thing in a different prospectus.

Pumped up Kicks by Foster the People has such a happy / dance beat & when you listen to the lyrics and realise it is about a shooting in a high school you cannot hear the happy beat any more, you start to visualise kids running in fear of their lives. Confused? I certainly am.

I was amazed of what we did or did not see in the Fuzzy Mona Lisa, how different personality types can get completely different views on the same picture. I was  also astonished how different me & my good lady wife are, I would make the smoothies out of fruit in the bowl & with the lovely Bren the fruit would be heading towards the bin. I won't even explain what happens in airports, needless to say I am not allowed mind passports or tickets.

With Geraldine we discover that the same product is hidden in green & red wrapping to test which would sell more.

On Angela Ahrendts moving to Apple one of my fellow bippers asked Naoimh was the position advertised, to which we learnt that 60% of jobs are not advertised. (unseen). Who would have believed that Amazon will send you four auto replies to a complaint by scanning the complaint before reading it.

The last unseen was with David in our Project Management lecture, Titanic - project managed blunders. If ever a project should have been stopped this was it. The project was for luxury & then changed to speed, & the haste to get it to sea without full safety checks was madness, and a disaster could have been avoided had they stuck to the script.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbvfir2x344

We are all getting prepared for our many presentations. The trick in presenting is to tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them & then tell them what you told them. Heres an analogy look at the news at  6 or 9 o'clock. They start off with the headlines, the stories behind the headlines & then the headlines.  Its easy, (says he biting his nails).

None of us want to be seen as being nervous (unseen theme again!! ). If you are nervous remember we are all in this together and are all routing for each other.   If you do by chance get nervous, don't forget to breath. Here is s a little breathing exercise to calm you down. Breath in for 5 seconds, breath out for 7 seconds & hold for 3 seconds. Repeat this five times & you will be fine. It slows down the heart & will make you less anxious. It works, but you will be fine.

I put a link on twitter on how to create QR Codes. www.qrstuff.com if you put the a web address in on the main page it will generate a QR code for you. Here is a QR code to another bippers blog. Scan it & see where it brings you, in keeping with the unseen theme I am not going to tell you who it is . I would suggest that you leave a comment on the blog though.

Now that we all have our email DCU addresses, I am going to set up a mailchimp account. We will use the group to see who opens the mail & do they follow a link back to a landing page. It will  be good practice to see how it works. I will generate the first email to get us started. I will email you (DCU mail) the logon for mailchimp to you, we can all have a go. Put recipes up or what ever you like up its a learning experience. A big thank you to our fantastic bakers, Ottalie, Gwen, Michael & Jean I believe.

I finished the IKEA project tonight, be warned, it took me far more time that I would have anticipated.

If anyone needs a hand with blogs or powerpoint, please ask me I would only be too delighted to help.

Here is the Tom & Jerry music again, it is brilliant I  still remember running into the house to watch them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYrUWfLlYI0
 


Regards,
BIP/ S'OD

Week Two - The Animal Week

Another great week at the Ryan Academy, week two already & it seems to be flying in. I have christened this week "animal week".

With Melrona we were given the Belbin self-perception inventory &  also the test of a  leader interpretation; now which of us are Tigers, Chameleons, Turtles, Eagles or even Salmons.

In our reading of "The Managing Innovation Design & Creativity" chapter one talks about the Hare brain & the Tortoise mind.

In Marketing in a Digital Era, Naoimh spoke about Mail Chimp.

What I want to go through first is teams & teamwork. The Volvo Round the World Yacht finished in Galway last year, it was an enormous event & a great achievement of the organising committee that landed such a prestigious high profile event. I personally don't have any interest in yachts, I was however blown away by the sheer size of the occasion. My purpose for driving down was to listen to a previous winning captain of the race that was giving a lecture on team work.  To be honest I was not overly keen on driving up and down to Galway in one day to listen to a lecture on team work. How wrong I was, he was a captivating speaker, his experiences were surreal, the conditions they had to endure in respect of both the weather & life on the boat were amazing. In order to gain more speed on the boat they minimise on everything. As part of his wonderful speech he spoke on how he selected his crew. He picked  a very diverse crew, each of them were brilliant in very different ways. He explained that he needed them all of to do different things as  they all had their specialities, each very valuable in the crew in order to make it work. He told a hilarious story that in bad weather when the mast broke a few of them were putting a temporary mast together cursing in several different languages while hanging on for dear life. One building, one tying ropes etc.

My point to you my fellow bippers is that we have all been given several assignments & we are in several teams. We should all look at what we have in our teams and analyse what we have. If we have two people in the team that are good with figures or IT, look at their secondary talents. Are the secondary talents creative, are they good in presentation preparations. It is  teamwork that will pull us all across the line in our results. If someone has a good idea that you don't like, don't rubbish it unless you have a better idea. This will only alienate the person that came up with the idea & lead to a negative effect on the team. I personally subscribe to the notion that you get more with sugar than salt. Remember this is a team game & to quote Geraldine "enjoy the peer to peer learning". If anyone needs assistance in doing their Powerpoint presentation, I can stay back with my laptop & help where needed. I would be only too delighted to help.

Back to Mail Chimp, this is a tremendous programme. (http://mailchimp.com) This allows you to send very presentable emails / offers to existing or potential customers.It also has wonderful templates that will help you on your way in sending professional looking emails. You can monitor how many were opened, did they go to your web site etc. They keep all your campaigns on record, you can see what worked & what did not work. You are also able to copy the last one & amend it for a new campaign. You can have multiple mailing lists & be selective on who you send what to, this is a great tool for direct marketing. It is a super programme, that is very cheap. If you  have less that two thousand subscribers you can send twelve thousand emails out free of charge per month.There is another fantastic feature on this programme that will monitor your "opt out" returns. If a client on your mailing list clicks on the opt out link at the bottom of your email (all advertising emails must have an opt out link) it will exclude their email address from future campaigns.

I think as an experiment for our bip team, we should open an account in mailchimp. We will use our own email addresses as the customer base. We should send out offers, some of us open the offer, some follow through to a landing page on a web site & one or two opt out. I  can set up a generic logon so we can all have a go. If you are interested in participating please either give me your email addresses during the week or email me.

Now in keeping with the animal theme I am off to read about Dinosaurs in Chapter two of  The Managing Innovation Design & Creativity



Regards,
BIP / SO'D