Everyone knows that creating a positive customer experience is what it is all about. The individual outcomes, and their interactions, creates a real boon for business growth. And the tell-tale signs of a positive customer experience are not so hard to identify. Customers will:
-feel good about their purchase
-want to share their story
-will return to the vendor seeking more
-will shun alternatives
-will provide genuine feedback to the vendor

So no doubt, it is important to focus on creating those positive customer experiences. But getting there does not boil down to a bunch of incentive schemes to get more “Likes” or “tweets”. Getting there boils down to understanding what kind of customer experience is valued by your target market, and then investing in those areas. It is this understanding of what your customers value that is the real holy grail of creating those positive experiences and outcomes. And this is where the formula for getting there becomes less obvious.

The customer experience is borne out of some blend of 3 major components:
-The product/service offering
-The pricing/delivery offering
-Company support, both pre and post purchase

Determining what your customer segment values is determined by which 2 out of 3 items that they value most. They cannot choose all 3. Playing with the combinations allows us to see how things fall into place. If customers want the best product, and best price, they will not get the best support. Or if they want the best product, and best support, they will not get the best price. And if they want the best price and best support, they will not get the best product.

Of course, customers always want it all. So establishing an understanding of how your customer’s value system works, and henceforth their expectations, really needs to tie back to 2 fundamental points:
-The nature of the problem that your product/service offering solves
-The commitment the customer has to addressing the problem

And these are the key insights that need to be discovered and leveraged in order to drive positive customer experience. If the nature of the problem that you are solving is deemed important, and the customer’s commitment to solve it is high, then the user experience with the product/service offering is a high priority. And this is where investment will yield the best dividends. Conversely, having great pricing, great support, with a mediocre offering will fail to be achieve a positive customer experience, because you may be failing to deliver on the real usage needs.

Generating positive customer experience does not have a universal formula. It boils down to the things that you do well, and that are valued by the customer. It is the job of your sales and marketing efforts to find ways in which to communicate these aspects, such that it resonates with the customers whose values match yours. Of course, this sets off the whole cycle. Awareness. Interest. Demand. Purchase. And ultimately a positive customer experience which then causes those most desirable customer behaviors, that can truly catalyze your business growth.

So what exactly is business development anyways?

Does anyone really know? Is it sales? Is it marketing? Is it sales and marketing? Is it strategic alliances? Is it joint ventures? Is it mergers and acquisitions?

Here is the real test. Ask a number of different people what business development is and you will get a number of different interpretations. In honor of defending the turf of sales and marketing domains, here is my take. “Business Development” is a title that has crept into the vernacular of sales and marketing, in some misguided effort to embellish things. The ugly side effect is that, rather than being a proxy for the functions of sales and marketing, it creates fuzziness that results in negative synergy between the two functions.

If someone is in sales or marketing, and they are labelled as business development, it is an excellent way lose focus. What really happens is that the focus will shift around, shifting both priorities and responsibilities. Simply because of the lack of a clean delineation. And without the proper focus, it is more likely that the end result is a lack of business that gets developed.

When it comes to sales and marketing functions, roles and responsibilities need to be quite clear. Sales is all about the here and now. They must be focused on finding ways in which to solve particular issues that a prospective customer may be having now, with the products or services that they represent now. It is their responsibility to find those prospective customers who are qualified to buy now, and win their share of those opportunities. Marketing is not about the here and now. It is focused on generating all that awareness and interest that stimulates and creates the marketplace for those who can benefit from the product or services that they offer. It is their responsibility to find ways to create a pool of qualified candidate customers, who are ready for the here and now.

Given the completely different timeframes, and different outputs, these two functions just cannot be grouped together in any manner. Because if they do, the immediate and urgent priorities always take precedent over the longer term ones. This inevitably translates into more resources going into the sales effort, with marketing efforts being degraded into a random and dysfunctional set of activities. Unless you are in a business that does not need very much of one or the other (i.e. there is not much requirement for the sales effort, or there is not much requirement for a marketing effort), then the overall process of growing new business degrades.

In today’s marketplace, buyers have a myriad of choices. And they use the internet as a tool to narrow down a short list of potentially qualified suppliers. As it turns out, these buyers are spending more time engaging through marketing communications in order to narrow down that list. It means that the scope of the marketing task has increased, simply because of the fact buyers are weighing that information more heavily.

So what does it mean for your business? Start by jettisoning the mindset that ‘business development’ brings with it. Don’t allow sales and marketing activities to be blended together. They are separate tasks which are both vital to growing your business. Separate them. But make sure that the buyer’s journey effectively crosses over from one to the other as seamlessly as possible.

Once in a while, I come across someone who makes the assertion that there is “no marketing required” for the business that they are in. This always gets my attention. Where is this utopia? So I listen carefully with both ears to try to discern how their alchemy works. The result is always made up of half-truths, and unfortunately, the person is treating them as absolute truths. So let’s take a run through what causes some business people to think this way.

All of my customers know me.

That is quite an enviable position to be in. But your business is not an episode of Cheers “where everybody knows your name”. Just because they know who you are, respect you fully, and may even be loyal customers, it doesn’t translate to a permanent commitment to continue to buy from you.

Are these the type of customers who just love the status quo? Who are not going to invest any effort into seeking out new solutions to existing problems? Who do not come across any new problems? Or look for better ways to do things? Unlikely. Customers are always on the lookout for alternatives to improve. If you do not market new and different ideas to them in some form, you are putting yourself in an excellent position to miss the turn when their thinking changes.

I know all the potential customers.

Quite an impressive feat. But how well do you know them? Are you sitting with them continually? Is it an absolute direct line, from dealing with their issues, to having a mechanism to inform you of how they are addressing these issues? Do you have a defacto perma-presence among them? Unlikely.

You only have a limited time with your existing and potential customers. Even in the same industry segment, your customers are all trying to differentiate themselves in some way. Hence, they all have uniqueness which is a culmination of all their distinctive characteristics. Bringing out that distinction requires you to shape your marketing to elicit a response. And by this process you will get to better know your customers. It would be nice if you could just get them to diligently fill out questionnaires. But, even if they utterly respect you, you have to fulfill the ever pressing question that hangs over them, “What’s in it for me?”.

The product/service markets itself.

I would agree that the customer experience garnered from the use of your product or service has incredible power to secure an excellent standing in the eyes of your customer. This implies that it would be completely intuitive for the customer to seek you out for any issue that is within the realm of the issue that you are currently helping to address. Unlikely.

Customers have their own way of looking at things, and create their own perceptions. Somehow all of this marketing messaging that is flowing all around them, in all its various forms, adds to those perceptions. And one of their behaviors is pigeon holing. Supplier A for issue X. Supplier B for issue Y. If you are going to be pigeon holed, it is you who need to drive that marketing message to ensure that you are put in the right set of pigeon holes. You current product/service has already been assigned.

On whatever scale you operate, marketing is a key connection to your customers. It is a key process, not only in servicing and evolving with the needs of your targeted marketplace; but also in helping you define what business you are in. Whether it is direct marketing or targeted marketing, or any one of a number of different models that may be best suited to your business, it will help you drive your business in the right direction.

Are you in the way? Or are you along the way?

That is the question that you must be able to answer when it comes to your marketing initiatives.

I recently decided to visit New York City with my family. Coordinating a schedule with everyone’s sightseeing activities was no small task. As it turns out our trip to the Empire State Building had to be bumped in the schedule as we were waiting for a clear day. We were to go up the building on the afternoon of our last day. And on that clear sunny afternoon, my family and I were barreling down West 34th Street, like a bunch of camera commandos on a mission. Nothing would get in our way to slow us down.

And then it happened. Some street vendor was waving a brochure and saying something about cutting down your time in the line up to get into the Empire State Building. He was quite astute to what mattered to us most. He saw us coming and he totally understood the value of time to us. So his message was completely focused on the time-saving element. Amazingly he got everyone’s attention and we stopped to see if this was myth or reality. And in 5 minutes, he gave us the scoop on how long the line-up gets. Yes, it was almost as if we had come along as pre-sold customers. We gladly bought his tickets to the short line at a 30% premium. This guy was no longer in the way. He was along the way and was able to speed us along our journey faster than we had anticipated.

I am not the first person to point it out. But let’s be clear. All marketing is an interruption. Of course we live in a world where it is part of how we discover and learn about things that may have an impact on how we carry on. Up to some threshold, both in quantity and density, it is comfortably tolerated. People know that they have to take the good with the bad.

But what swings the pendulum from high annoyance to comfortably tolerated, is not just the quantity and density, it also about the context of the message. The context that complements your marketing message brings with it value and respect for what you are offering. You may have an advertisement, but it is not treated as negative disruption if in fact it complements the interests of the target buyer in some way. The right context not only gives your marketing message the strength to resonate, it also cedes you some credibility for actually having your message placed in that particular context. Both of these factors increase the potential engagement that your message will receive.

Although we don’t see as much of it anymore, the web pop-up banner is just an ideal example of in-your-face, attention-stealing mechanism that just does not earn trust. And on the flip side, visitors can’t help but notice those context-sensitive headings that present the familiar phrase “You may also like…”. So that is the goal. First, that marketing message must be created so that it resonates with the target audience. And then you must find or create the right context for it to truly get the strongest resonance. You must find a way to be along the way that your buyer is travelling and not in the way.

GoPro has done its IPO, and the founder Nicholas Woodman just became a billionaire. It is a story that I have followed for quite some time. But, it is not because of the product’s exceptional ability to capture life’s adventures like they have never been captured before. What really caught my attention was the background story on Nicholas Woodman, and how his previous failed startup really changed his business outlook. And that has some real relevance for anyone struggling to bring something new to the market.

Nick Woodman had an internet-based company, funBug, that flamed out in the 2001 dot.com crash. The fact that the company was venture-backed left a quite an impression. It was about the dependency on someone else to keep the business going. He didn’t like it. So he vowed to bootstrap his next company and not be dependent on someone else to write a check in order to keep the company going. He chose to focus on something small, that he could control and have it be profitable from the start.

So he focused on this wrist-based strap for disposable waterproof cameras. And he slaved away at this design for 2 years. It was only supposed to take 4 months. But it was a constant process of design, material selection and sewing prototypes. And in 2004, the one-man company debuted its wrist-based film camera at an Action Sports Retailer trade show, and received a $2,000 order from a Japanese distributor. What a start. And in 2005 they became a 2 person company. And in 2006 they became a 3 person company. Not exactly stellar sales growth. But they were focused on the problem they were solving.

What is so important to recognize is that Nick Woodman really understood the problem he was solving. (i.e. initially, it was constantly loosing disposable cameras while surfing). He experienced if first hand and had an unquashable desire to create a product that solved it. It was all about the need to mount and control the camera by one individual.

And as it turns out, this is the most important question for every company to have a clear understanding of. What problem are you solving? And of course, there has to be the big qualifying question. Does anyone care that it is being solved? If you can get the right answer to these 2 questions, you have a business. And when Nick Woodman received that first order, he had the correct answers to both questions.

Listening to Nick Woodman’s interview at the IPO, shows that he has not lost his focus on what matters. When asked about how he can prevent his product from being commoditized, or crashing like the once popular Flip camera (that Cisco had acquired for $600m and discontinued), he is still quite glued to the fundamentals. His answer:

“It starts with solving real problems for consumers. People buy solutions. … They don’t buy gadgets.”

And here is how he describes his company:

“We make it easy for passionate people around the world to capture and share incredible life experiences in the form of compelling content.”

Definitely no mention of any technology gadgetry there. Of course, if you have followed the evolution of the HERO models, it is very clear that GoPro pays a huge amount of attention to the underlying technology. But it is just enabling technology. Driving the whole vision is the real needs of the customer base, and making sure that GoPro can satisfy those needs better than anyone else.

So there you have it. One person’s passion to understand and solve a problem not only leads to happy customers; but it also brings a host of insights that allow both the solution and the customer needs to evolve together. GoPro has been driven by a discipline that has created an exceptional brand, and quite a large company. Hat’s off to their success.