Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Scaleability

Buying Customers
September 4, 2019

Buying Customers

Acquisition is a common form of expansion.  Especially where customers buy regularly and repeatedly.  As the buyer, you add a whole bunch of new customers in one go, in bulk.  As the seller you get to cash in on all those years of hard work.

So far, so good.

For employees, takeover or merger often leads to culture shock, as two distinct (and probably inarticulate) Promises of Value clash in the new business.  This is a recognised issue that gets attention and effort from the buyer.

But what about customers?

Often, they don’t even know until after the event, when they call for support and find the rules have changed on them, or see the size of their next bill.

What do you think they feel when they find out?

Perhaps they don’t care, as long as there is no difference in the service they get or the fees they have to pay.  They didn’t have a relationship with the previous company and they don’t with the new one either.   These customers will stay until a significantly better offer comes along, as sooner or later it will.

Perhaps they are delighted – because the new rules make things easier for them, and efficiencies or economies of scale make their bills lower.  These customers will stay, and tell everyone why.

Or perhaps they feel belittled, betrayed and angry.   They had a relationship with the previous company.  They had chosen it because of its values and ethos.  They had bought in to its Promise of Value.  This company and the way it worked had become part of their life, and now you’ve taken that away.  Worse still, you’ve treated them as a commodity.  These customers will leave, and tell everyone why.

What’s the answer?

Aim for delighted, every time.

 

Who’s driving?
August 27, 2019

Who’s driving?

Most of us business owners are driven by our needs – for autonomy, for self-expression, success, money or even revenge.   That doesn’t often build a business that lasts, except by chance.

The promise you make can’t be for everyone.   ‘Everyone’, or their close relation ‘anyone’, turns you into a commodity – interchangeable with every competitor in your field, putting all of you in a race to the bottom on price.

And before you work out what your promise really is, you need to work out who it’s for.

There is a community of people who need what you can offer.  They are underserved by what’s out there, looking for a change that you can help them to make.   They want to become something or someone different, and don’t know how to do it.

As long as there are enough of them, (and enough is less than you think), these people are your market, and by putting them in the driving seat, you’ll start to build a business that lasts.

It’s never about us, it’s about the people we serve.

Good design is unobtrusive
August 23, 2019

Good design is unobtrusive

“Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools.   They are neither decorative objects nor works of art.   Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.”  Dieter Rams, Design Principle number 5.

Processes, organisations, jobs, are products fulfilling a purpose too.

Increasing revenues
August 2, 2019

Increasing revenues

Profit = Revenue – Cost.

So if you can reduce cost, you can increase profit. And if you can increase revenue you can also increase profit.

So how do you do that?

The classic answer is that there are only 4 ways:

  • Sell to more customers
  • Sell more at a time to each customer
  • Sell more frequently to each customer
  • Put your prices up

This is of course true, but it misses a vital point.   Nowadays, whatever business you are in, there are hundreds of options for customers to choose from.   Why should they buy from you?   Why should they pay you more than the next business?

Unless you are operating in some unfortunate part of the world, nobody really needs anything any more.   For example, we all need to eat, but do we really need 25 different kinds of cornflake?  Do we really need cornflakes at all?

No.

The truth is that you’re not selling anything.   You’re making a promise.   A promise to help the people you serve become who they really want to be.   That’s what people are willing to pay for.   The bigger and better the promise, the more it will be worth to the right person.   That’s how you increase revenues.

The hard part is working out who is the right person, and who it is they want to become.

And the hardest part is keeping the promise you make.

Effort
July 29, 2019

Effort

I saw a great demonstration years ago, which is quite fun to try for yourself.

One of your team sits in a chair, facing away from the rest of the team.    Somewhere behind the chair, between it and the rest of the team, place a waste-paper bin.

The aim of the exercise is for the person in the chair to get a ball into the waste-paper bin without looking at the bin.   They try first on their own.  Then they try again.

This time, the team gives them feedback on how they did.  First of all, the feedback is just “You missed”.

But after a couple of goes, the team get the hang of it and start giving more helpful feedback – “Too far right”,  “About a foot short” etc.   This gives the person in the chair information they can actually use to adjust the only thing they can control – how the ball leaves their hand.

The next thing you know, the ball lands in the waste paper bin.

Effort, with feedback, is what actually gets results.

So if you want to improve results, it makes sense to improve the effort that goes into them.  And to do that you need to know where you can make adjustments, and get the right kind of feedback on any adjustments you make.

“You missed.” doesn’t cut it.

Thanks to Graham Williams for the memorable demonstration.

What makes a good Process? Responsibility and Resources
July 17, 2019

What makes a good Process? Responsibility and Resources

A good process is managed by a single role from start to finish.  Other roles may be involved, but only one is responsible for ensuring the desired outcome is reached.

A good process also ensures that everything needed to run the process is available at the right time.

With clear responsibilities and no need to scrabble around for resources, everyone can get on with the job – of delivering on promises.

What makes a good Process? Clarity of purpose.
July 16, 2019

What makes a good Process? Clarity of purpose.

A good process has a crystal clear purpose.  It is dedicated to achieving a single, customer-meaningful, business-meaningful outcome.

This outcome can be big and abstract at the top level (Keep Promise), increasing in granularity (Walk Dogs) until you reach the lowest practical and concrete level (File VAT Return).

This means that the person running the process knows exactly what they are trying to achieve, and they (and you) know exactly when they’ve achieved it.

What makes a good Process? Simplicity.
July 15, 2019

What makes a good Process? Simplicity.

A good process is as simple as it can be, but no simpler.

And like Chanel’s classic ‘little black dress’, it’s harder to achieve than it looks.