VALKRE | Value Creation

The Top 3 Things Social Media can learn from “Winning with Customers”

Our friends at Polar Unlimited put together a nice video summary of our book Winning With Customers and provide some helpful advice to those using social media in B2B markets.  

LINK

Couldn't agree more.

via blog.valkre.com

It's Spring! Time for a Newsletter!

Spring is here and so is RENDER 3.0!                

I love this time of year in Chicago! Everything is in alignment. The Cubs are in last, the Bears are going to win the Super Bowl, the Bulls are still trying to find their post MJ groove, the Hawks are the best team in town, and the Sox win games that nobody knows about. Everything is green, flowers are blooming, birds are back, and every road of consequence is under construction. Late Spring in Chicago is perfect.

Executing Customer Value: A Porsche or a 10 year old SUV?

I own an SUV which proudly carries the pock marks of having driven me through the streets of Chicago for the past ten years. Recently I was at my brother’s house in Princeton, NJ and he insisted that I test drive his brand new Porsche Cayman S. I really was not that excited because I did not want him to tell me how my gear shifting abilities are inferior to his gear shifting abilities, but nonetheless I agreed to a test drive. His advice: once the car is in 2nd gear, step on the gas pedal, stay in 2nd gear, and feel the car take off….WOW, WOW, WOW! Now, I secretly wonder all the time if I too “need more speed”.

I bring this up because it made me think about my own job… helping companies with Customer Value. A common sentiment I often hear when talking to companies about Customer Value is, “we already do customer value, we know our value proposition, we listen to our customers and we integrate their point of view into our business”, but then they often add, “Anyway, what power do I have as a (fill in the blank) to get my organization to change?” It may be a bit odd that my brain connected a Porsche story to getting started with Customer Value, but follow me on this: 

1. Find, do not build, a machine for speed: All B2B companies are in a race: Those who improve their customer’s profitability first, are those who win. It is that simple. And yet, it is that hard. In fact, it has become so hard that many companies are building their own Customer Value tools, systems and processes. The race out there is being fueled by information technology and increased accessibility to data, and the winners know how to harness it, how act upon it, and how make the best choices for their business. If you are driving incremental value for your customers, you do not win. So, the first thing I try to help companies understand is that they need to get on a path to speed: Find a Porsche, do not try to build one. Time matters in a race.
2. Find a race: This is about finding a race that matters. No one cares that I beat my brother in our backyard footraces, but far more people cared about my ability to be a winner in the high school 400 meter hurdles. The same is true in business, find a race that matters so that people will pay attention when you win. Maybe this is as simple as focusing on those few accounts that have great upside potential but have been underperforming, or it is that emerging market where your organization just cannot seem to penetrate and grow. Or maybe it is figuring out how to profitability grow that elusive “Services” offering. Find a race that matters.
3. Take it for a test drive: So you’re sitting in a speedy car in a race that matters. Even though my new metaphorical Porsche might be capable of going really fast, the reality is that I am not yet ready to drive it very fast. The same holds true for most companies when getting serious about Customer Value. Take the time to find the right customer listening approaches, learn how to capture that data and turn it into insights, then ensure you follow the thread all the way from Customer Data to Action to Results. Once you’ve gone around the Data to Action to Results track a few times you will be ready to start pushing harder on the accelerator
4. Give your boss a ride: Now that you have learned how to drive fast (safely), take the boss for a spin. Just like my experience with the Porsche, there is a huge difference between thinking about driving the car versus actually driving the car. The actual experience is exhilarating. In the case of Customer Value, what I often find is that organizations spend much of their time asking their boss if she would like to buy a Porsche, rather than just pulling up and asking if she would like to go for a test drive!  A recent email from a General Manager who just experienced a test drive: “I am enjoying our Customer Value discussions and they are certainly taking us to a different place with our customers! We have their attention. Thank you!”  

I realize that having access to a Porsche, building the muscle memory to know how to drive it fast, and then, finally, offering to take your boss for a test drive is not that easy.  Which brings me to this…I have a Porsche you can use.  It is called Render®, the first Customer Value Software.

What are you doing to understand Customer Value and create more value for your customers faster than your competitors?

 

 

Render 3.0: The most recent step in our Customer Value Journey

In the next few days we are releasing Render 3.0. This is an exciting time for our company! For those of you who have not been following our story; five years ago we started building a SaaS platform with Owens Corning for the purpose of managing Customer Value (value propositions, commercial innovation and executing improvement activity for both). Three years ago we started with GE and a few others. We have been to the ends of the earth learning, building and putting into practice Customer Value Software to improve how companies listen to customers and integrate insights into business improvement levers then execute.

Nine months ago we were finally able to come up for air, step back and ask ourselves, what’s next. The answer was fundamentally about Speed. Our customers were asking for Speed. Speed up everything from customer listening, to decisions on improvement initiatives, to getting the right value props out into the field, to keeping customers informed of progress, to getting results. The headline news on Render 3.0 is SPEED. What has that meant?

• New User Interface: Over five years we've learned a ton about click paths, where people get tripped up, where they spent time. Our goal here is to make Render fun and easy to use. On Monday of this week we turned on Render for a group of four sales reps at one of our new customers. Yesterday, Tuesday, they were talking Value Proposition with their customer, and found a $60,000 opportunity. It was easy for them, and they had fun showing off their new found tool to their customers.

• Self-Service: This has been a high hurdle for us, maybe where we have learned and labored the most. But, something we had to achieve to help our customers scale. Part of the answer is in the User Interface. Another component has been creating flexibility, so whether you’re a beginner or an expert in the fields of Value Proposition and Commercial Innovation, you can use Render to improve your work. On this dimension we’ve taken a page out of the TurboTax book. I am not that skilled with the Tax Code but I am comfortable in doing my own taxes. We’re not going to declare absolute victory on this topic but we sure have a bunch of people going fast on their own.  

• WorkSpaces: The workspace vision focuses on getting work done. The learning leveraged here stems from bumps and bruises we’ve received in the practical application of getting customer data incorporated into how a business operates. Sounds easy, it isn’t! The key has been getting down to working teams…not corporate or marketing or any other individual function. But, down to the working teams who get things done for customers. Workspaces provide teams a common and dynamic platform where they can organize and complete work. Teams can quickly access and work on their latest value prop and improvement efforts for Indonesia (or pick your county, product, service, solution, offering, division, segment, etc) from wherever they might be in the world. Their sales counterparts on the front lines get instant status to be used on their next sales call.  

• Reporting: The challenge for us on this dimension has been the constant demand for looking at customer value information in different ways. Executives want their view, sales something else, marketing different again and the list goes on.  This is really a communication thing. If you cannot communicate the Customer Value information effectively, then what’s the point. We have two kinds of users on this dimension. People who create reports, and people who look at those reports. Our new reporting engine makes this easy for both. The report makers can establish standard reports that are continuously available and up to date for their executives. And, have access to even richer tools to find more insights for their organization.

We are not done with Speed. We are believers that the future is not going to be whether or not a company understands its customers, what they value and what is coming around the corner. That’s old news and all companies do this to some degree or another. The winning companies of the future will be those who can go from customer data, to insight, to action faster than competitors. It is for those companies who seek SPEED we dedicate Render 3.0.