Brilliant Manager, 3rd Edition

138 brilliant manager

Of course the ultimate form of change is death . . .

I would also advise that you adopt the following tip.

This leads neatly on to the next set of tips, which focus on the

need to consider your proposition dispassionately.

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tip

Design your product or service to be flexible and adaptable

One of the few areas I suggest you invest more than the bare

minimum in is engineering your product or service so that it can

easily be adapted as you find out what the customers really want

to buy. A bit of investment upfront in making it easy to adapt your

product or service is nearly always money well spent.

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tip

You must be ready and willing to pull the plug

There is absolutely no shame in admitting that a business proposition

is an honourable failure. The problem is that your passion will be

whispering in your ear that one last push will see you through to success.

How do you ignore that insidious whisper? You need to set clear goals

and targets so that you know when the time has come to pull the plug.

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tip

Get access to authoritative, dispassionate advice

The best possible situation is if your boss is keeping a close eye on

you and can tell you when to pull the plug. Failing that, you need

access to dispassionate advisers you trust.

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Brilliant business tips 139

Some useful points to consider in identifying a truly compelling

‘buy it’ proposition.

 Does it solve one of the customer’s top three problems?

Like aspirin it is very easy to sell something that makes a

nasty pain go away.

 How easy is the product to own after you buy it? If your

product or service requires a significant effort on the part of

the customer to use it then your proposition becomes a lot

less compelling. This can even be as simple as the fact that

publishers find it easier to sell a short book than a long

book.

 If there is an existing market for your product or service,

are you clearly differentiated from the competition? If

you are not well differentiated you will need other major

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tip

Ensure the ‘buy it’ proposition is truly compelling

I will illustrate this point with a mortifying example from my own

history. I was in charge of a business that was selling a technology

that made it much easier to create a piece of software that could

be easily ported to all the different variants of the UNIX operating

system. The technology was unique, very clever and slashed porting

costs by more than half. We knew that companies that were selling

their software products on many UNIX systems often spent as

much as 50 per cent of their R&D budgets just doing the porting

exercise. Surely this was a compelling proposition? Oh no it wasn’t!

The problem was that porting was perceived as a low-risk activity,

you just threw money at it and it was solved. Management were

not prepared to invest their time changing something that worked

just to save money, they were only willing to invest their efforts in

solving something that was causing them pain.

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140 brilliant manager

advantages, such as a strong existing brand you can exploit

or much better channels to market.

 Do you have a really simple, clear, persuasive ‘elevator

pitch’ – can you tell a customer what your proposition is in

less than a minute?

 Has some change in the world made your product or

service a ‘must buy’? A good example is if it helps handle

some new law or regulation that has been introduced.

This leads to the obvious next step.

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tip

Use any protection available to you

This can be any mixture of patents, copyright, trade secrets, know-

how, non-disclosure agreements, registered trademarks, brand

names, exclusive contracts with distributors, etc.

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tip

Check your proposition is defensible

One of the common myths of business is that being first to market

is really important. It is the first organisation to create a major

brand that usually grabs the spoils. Time and again a ‘fast follower’

grabs the market from the ‘prime mover’. If you are the prime

mover (first to market), how do you stop a competitor (the fast

follower) with better brands, financing and channels from creating

a competitive product and taking your market away from you?

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