Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Shop Talk Podcast #4 - Tony Ulwick on Determining What Customers Really Want from New Products

The podcast is back, this time featuring Tony Ulwick, author of the book "What Customers Want" and CEO of Strategyn, a consulting firm helping companies improve their innovation processes.

We're talking about how to gather information from customers to drive innovation. Most companies have "voice of the customer" programs, but few know how to extract quality information from those programs. It takes asking the right questions, and removing ambiguity from the answers. In the podcast, Tony states that it's wrong to assume that users can't tell us what they want; instead, the problem is that "companies don't know how to listen to customers."

You can access the podcast here.

Here are links to companies, people, etc., mentioned in the podcast:

Clayton Christensen - "focus on the job the user wants to get done"
Theodore Levitt's "Customers don't want a 1/4" drill"
Apple
Strategyn White Papers

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Friday, November 16, 2007

Mistake Bank #12 - Don't forget about support!

What follows is a sample of a project I've been working on called the Mistake Bank. It combines narrative, learning from mistakes, video and web2.0 in an environment that companies can use to train new employees, create a corporate history, connect workers and mentors, and bring more humanity to the workplace. Email me at inquiry@caddellinsightgroup.com if you would like to know more about the Mistake Bank.

When John Caddell began his first job as a product manager, he inherited a new product that was being sold by a large partner. And once the first sale happened, he learned that having a support strategy is not optional. Click here to view video.

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Stories #1 - To close the deal, you often need to negotiate face-to-face

There is a moment early in the movie "Local Hero" where MacIntyre, the executive who is being dispatched to Scotland to negotiate a land purchase for an oil company, complains to a colleague about the trip. "I don't need to travel there; I'm more of a Telex man." Yet he goes anyway, and finds the Scots extremely challenging (and shrewd) negotiators. The deal wouldn't have gotten done via Telex.

I was thinking of this while reflecting on the experience I had negotiating with a client was dragging their feet on signing the contract. Our general manager requested that I travel to New York and try and get the contract closed myself and I protested and said we can get it done on a conference call. He said, "Sometimes you have to go there in person." And so I did. Here's what happened...




Voice-to-Screen messaging - powered by SpinVox

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