Product

Those Who Lack Great Ideas

Garth Beyer

Japanese-Cooking-Style

As much as I believe that everyone can come up with great ideas, I do come across those that will tell me that they can’t. Instead of fighting with them and trying to convince them of what they already believe to be false, I side with them.

That doesn’t give them an excuse not to do anything.

If anything, it encourages even more action on their part.

My simple retort then is to find a business that you value, a model that you can see yourself implementing and then build that business in an area it has yet been built in. In essence, you’re taking a great idea and using it geographically elsewhere.

Sometimes I fall into the trap of believing that a restaurant in town that centers on entertaining the customers by allowing them to watch the chefs cooking and turning that into a show is the only restaurant that does that; that there are no other restaurants like that anywhere else.

This comes to the restaurant’s advantage – the belief of “the only one”.

However, after a moments thought, you and I both know there are more restaurants that carry this model of turning a dining experience into an entertaining experience, but that doesn’t make them less valuable.

This process works with any great idea, not just restaurant based ideas. Think of some product or service you love. Guaranteed you can find almost the save product or service elsewhere – not everywhere, but elsewhere.

Don’t wait to come up with a great idea. Others have already done that for you.

 

Stay Positive & Take A Great Idea And Bring It Back Home With You

Garth E. Beyer

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The Selling To Caring Gap

Garth Beyer

pencilcake

Bernadette Jiwa, who I admire dearly, wrote yesterday that most people ask, “How do I sell my idea?” when what they need to ask is, “How am I going to help people to care about this?” I don’t necessarily disagree with her, but I think what matters is the space between the two questions.

Let’s throw out some thoughts about the first question: how do I sell my idea?

It’s an honest question. After all, that is exactly what many want to do. But, if that is the question you’re asking, perhaps you have a poor idea because a good idea is never sold, it’s shared. Sharing something doesn’t mean there’s no cost to it, but it does connote gratuity, sincerity and fairness – three traits that most never receive when being sold something.

A quick thought on the second question: how am I going to help people to care about this?

The more meaningful question is “do I care about this?” Jiwa’s question is important because it centers on you: how you deliver, how you act, how you tell the story of your product. What’s necessary, though, is first understanding what it is you’re trying to share with people.

You can deliver your product inside a cake with a story about you making this cake especially for the customer, but if all that is in the cake is a pencil – all that you’ve done falls short. The gap between selling an idea or product and getting people to care about that idea or product lies in understanding the idea or product itself.

If you understand that you’re selling a pencil, it makes how you get people to care about it easier.

 

Stay Positive & What’s In It For Them?

Garth E. Beyer

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Downgrading What Is Free

Garth Beyer

4390737616_d310ffd5cd_z

As unfortunate as it is, some businesses need to downgrade what they give for free.

Let’s stick with the same example from yesterday. Suppose that this bar and grill that gives large and cool designed mugs to those who go there on their birthday had to downgrade. Suppose they have to make cuts in their budget to stay open. They decide to give away the rest of the large and cool mug supply and replace them with small, round cheap mugs that just have their logo on it.

Unlike upgrading what is free, downgrading what is free hurts the customers you haven’t yet gotten.

On the positive side, it makes those who were there to get the free large, cool designed mugs feel even better. However, this has two repercussions.

1. Feeling better about something doesn’t mean they will want to come back again.

2. Giving something awesome for free is as much about optimizing word of mouth marketing as it is about making someone feel good for coming to your bar and grill, and not someone else’s.

The gamut here is that downgrading what is free risks negative word of mouth. Imagine someone who got the large, cool designed mug on their birthday then invites someone else to the same bar and grill in two weeks to celebrate their birthday, only, neither knows that the bar and grill downgraded their birthday mugs.

You can imagine where this leads.

This leaves us with the question of how we can make downgrading what is free, work. After all, while upgrading is always an option, sometimes downgrading is not.

The answer is, when you can’t change the product to make it better (or when you’re forced to downgrade), change the delivery.

People talk more about what they experienced than what they received anyway.

 

Stay Positive & Over, Over, Over Deliver

Garth E. Beyer

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Doing More Than You’ve Done

Garth Beyer

Of course that’s not possible, but feeling like you’ve done more than you have is.

Shoes tell a lot about a person. I always say that you never have to step in anyone’s shoes to know what their life is like, you’ve just got to look at the bottom of them.

Tried and true… until recently.

I’m wearing my second pair of Steve Madden shoes and I feel bad. I feel like I’ve done more than I actually have. You look at the bottom of my shoes and all traction is worn flat. Oh, and the soles are cracked, creating a hole for my heel to nearly touch the pavement with each step. (They actually did with my last pair!)

Alas, I’ve done very little of anything exciting while wearing these shoes. A few dress-up events here, a few nice dinners there and that’s it. No parkour, no carnivals, or community interactive events. In other words, I’ve done little while wearing these shoes. They seem to reflect the opposite.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe most people will only think the shoe is poorly made, and it is, but one thing is guaranteed: everything you use makes you feel something.

People love products that make them feel good, make them feel motivated, better-than-average, and like they accomplished something. Whether you think about how you feel when you use something or not, if you’re creating something for someone else to use, you don’t have a choice but to consider it.

 

Stay Positive & How Does That Make You Feel?

Garth E. Beyer

Looking Like The Good Guy

Garth Beyer

If you’re given 10 free canvases, you still need to buy the paint.

If a friend gives you his old Gameboy, you still need to come up with the games.

When you buy an iPod, you have to get all the songs and shows you want.

Smart product creation is when you pay a large amount for one product that forces you to spend small amounts on what you need to use it: paints, games, songs, etc,.

Keurig is letting Madisonians trade in their used corded coffee makers for a brand new Keurig, looking like the good guy.

But now those that trade up have to buy K cups to go with it. Short term loss for Keurig, but creating a long-term gain. From my estimates, it will take roughly 300 K-cups for the Keurig to be paid off. From then on, it’s all profit.

(The target audience in itself is brilliant. They are appealing strictly to frequent to extreme coffee drinkers. Point for another post, perhaps.)

Keurig makes itself look good, but really it’s genius product design. Not necessarily making them the bad guy, but just a reminder that your habit is their profit, making you the product.

If it weren’t for the ease of pirating music. I’m sure Apple would be letting you upgrade your mp3 player to an iPod. I think we can cope though. It takes a very special product to pull off what Keurig is.

 

Stay Positive & It’s Coffee Time

Garth E. Beyer

Strategize: Working Backwards To Reach Your Goals

Garth Beyer

I’ve eaten a lot of organic apples but it wasn’t until I pulled the label off and stuck it to a notepad at work (for no reason) where I kept looking at it that I realized something. This apple came from New Zealand! That is on an island over 8,000 miles away from where I purchased it. It got me thinking…

We are all really ignorant of how far items and ideas travel before they reach us. Sure we’re curious where the hundred-dollar bill we have has been, but it stays a funny thought and is never looked into. While that specifically may be irrelevant, the concept is not.

Every goal has an origin. This apple states that it began in New Zealand and its goal was clearly to be bought in Madison, WI. The question I was asking myself was how did it get from New Zealand to here, but the growers of the apple were thinking ‘how do we get these apples to Madison, WI from here?’ not ‘where do these apples go from here?’

Notice the difference is that a destination was chosen for the apples to arrive and the method of transportation to get them there was worked out beginning in Madison, WI, not New Zealand. They marked their origin (New Zealand), set their goal (Madison, WI) and worked out everything backwards.

If they had worked it all out going forwards they may think that putting them on the first shipment to America will get them to Madison the quickest when really, first looking at where which flights are going into Madison the soonest and having them sent there.

One thought is that the quicker they get shipped, the quicker they reach their destination when in reality when the transportation strategies begin getting worked out from the destination, the product reaches it much quicker.

Spreading ideas or products isn’t about sending them into a thousand different directions hoping they eventually land at your goal. It is about knowing your goal, what people are in closest and most constant contact with your goal and which mode of transportation best reaches them directly.

The real question arises then, is it more efficient to figure out where a product needs to go to reach its destination or how quickly will it land at its destination if it is just sent off on any number of planes.

 

Stay Positive & Strategize

Garth E. Beyer

What Makes It Different

Garth Beyer
Justins Peanut Butter Cups

I have never seen or heard of these until I went to Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event and had one.

Then I had another, this time the milk chocolate kind, as opposed to the dark chocolate.

Then I had another, the same day within a span of four hours.

Then I grabbed two more and put them in my journey bag, I gave a third one to someone else and grabbed a fourth to eat while I grabbed a fifth one to eat on my way out of the event after I finished the one I was holding.

I then presumed to eat the two that I stored in my journey bag throughout the evening. Note: By “one” I mean the two chocolate peanut butter cups in the “one” package.

Total: 16

Depressing? I could fight and say they were organic although it doesn’t help my case too well. (More on organic in a moment)

To say they are delicious is an understatment which is something people often say about Reece’s peanut butter cups.

However, to say that Reece’s peanut butter cups are the most delicious ones in the world would be half-true. (As is the case for Justins) They are the best if you ask the niche audience that they are marketed to and consumed by.

Whereas, if you ask the niche group Justins markets to, they would say Justins chocolate peanut butter cups are the best.

What I’ve learned about products, not just chocolate peanut butter cups is that:

1. You can always improve but what you can improve on may not be exactly the product itself, the chocolate. It may be the shipment, how the ingredients are grown, the graphics of the wrapper, the mission statement on the box or in this case, the audience you are targeting.

2. All in all, precision meets profit. You can always find a niche market to make a profit, especially in organics. In other words, there is always a way to make it different for that special tribe who likes it that way.

Justin’s chocolate does just that. They reach out to the audience who doesn’t buy just cheap chocolate.

Afterall, for some people, going big means buying not just buying any kind of chocolate. If they are going to go big buying chocolate, they are going to spend an extra 40 cents or a dollar for the good chocolate, the rich chocolate, the organic chocolate, the chocolate that makes them feel they are benefiting the world by eating.

This is a small niche audience and Justins makes their chocolate different so it’s target is precise.

Stay Positive & Thought It Was Worth Sharing

Garth E. Beyer

Is there something you have had too much of?