Changing outcomes is also a PROCESS! Helping someone else change their past decisions is a bit magical!
Before we move on to the element of SERVE let’s take one more look at the challenge of UNDERSTAND….
I was reminded this week of an aspect of today’s world, and the balance that exists between what is, and what we want to have happened.
Today, our clients have a supplier source for every single product that they use today in their manufacturing. They have spent decades in many cases, tons of money in the selection, qualification, system-level evaluation, and manufacturing of every single part of every product that they make today.
And they have spent tremendous amounts of time and energy in making all of these decisions about all these things.
They have had design engineers, component engineers, quality engineers, manufacturing engineers, safety engineers, and every kind of product and technology expertise we can imagine, all put their official stamp of approval on every component level source decision needed to build their end products.
Decisions have been made, deployed, accepted, and lived with for their current end product offerings, and in reality, those same decisions will likely stand for almost all of their next generation of new end products created by our clients.
We like that stability when we are the chosen “one” and their use of our solutions starts, stays, and grows.
We don’t like that stability as much when we are NOT the chosen source for their solutions in our offering space.
There is the challenge.
The reality in most product offerings of any kind in our world today the new solutions offered for use by our clients in their own end products are for the most part “evolutionary” in nature and seldom offer a truly competitive differentiation that will make a significant difference to our clients versus solutions already offered in the market place.
To state that the world of products in general (ours and our clients) is pretty much one giant commoditized bag of the same stuff is a bit harsh, but not totally untrue. Incremental improvements and feature expansion do certainly add to the discussion levels and give us something to hang our “ours is different” hat on. At least at the surface level.
The table stakes in today’s environment is having great products amongst all of the elements of price and delivery as well.
NOTE… we have GREAT products, technology, and tools…absolutely!
So where is this going with respect to UNDERSTANDing our clients?
Well, that is simple AND complex.
Simply, the harsh reality is that if we are going to gain market share, grow the number of clients we have, and grow within those clients we already serve at some level… we must help them to CHANGE their thinking about the work and the decisions that they reached in the past with respect to their choice of suppliers in a given solution set. We must help them CHANGE their thinking, to CHANGE their beliefs, to CHANGE their actions… and choose US. And that is the complex part…CHANGE!
However complex it might seem or be, we CAN achieve it. It is quite doable. We know how, and many of you are good at it already.
Next week we will look at the magic in the use of SMEs and the PIVOT, in helping guide our clients through the CHANGE process.
OK, LET’S ROLL! Thru the change!
Mitch
