Homeric Consulting Services

04/26/2024

𝗖𝗠𝗢𝘀 & 𝗖𝗘𝗢𝘀: What's the 1 growth challenge you initially dismissed as 'too time-consuming' but now realize 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙛𝙪𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙙 𝙛𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙗𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣?

03/08/2024

Groundhog Day is one of my favorite movies. In the movie, Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a cynical, sarcastic, ego-centric, manipulative person who is doomed to relive the same day – Groundhog Day over and over again. Businesses “Groundhog Day” all the time.

For them, It goes something like this. They work hard to grow the company, but after a while, growth slows or plateaus. When that happens, business leaders often scope the problem by talking with their team, who blame their tools and say a new one will fix the problem.

So, they bring on a new tool and try to optimize around the tool. They’ll get some low-hanging fruit growth, and things slow down again. Why? Because they’re trying to optimize around tools. If you optimize around the tool, you aren’t optimizing around the actual problem.

But, to maintain growth businesses can change their tools or they can change their strategy. Just look at Amazon. they started by selling books. The thing that really set them apart was the customer review and low price point.

But as the company grew, they changed to become a seller of everything, not just books. At that point, they were still using some of the same tools that got them there – those that still applied, while dropping those that didn’t fit anymore.

After that, Amazon became a manufacturer of what they sell, and eventually online marketplace where people can make millions of dollars buying and selling their physical and digital products. Although some of the tools they use today may be similar if not identical, their strategy and model is dramatically different.

Now, I know that not every business is going to be an Amazon, but I’ve met enough business leaders to know they’re just as smart. The trick isn’t knowing how to do things. Its knowing when to change a tool vs when to change a strategy.

The key here is to be attuned to your customers and the value you’re delivering to them from their perspective and how the tools, tech, and market dynamics are changing to help you do that better than your competitors.

Just because a market is changing rapidly, doesn’t necessarily mean you have to change with it – as long as you’re still delivering value to your customers better, faster, and cheaper than your competitors. When that no longer becomes the case, it’s time to change.

02/28/2024

The business world has a huge problem today. It’s pretty insidious because it’s so good at disguising itself as something good. I’m a huge history nerd, and one of the things that has always intrigued me was how many successful businessmen have military experience.

This is where we meet our problem. In the Art of War, Military Strategist Sun Tzu says that the key to success lies in knowing your enemy at least as well as you know yourself. These veterans-come-entrepreneurs take that same approach with identifying the competition in the market. In war, the enemy is very clear: it’s the guy trying to take your land, resources, or position.

The problem with business today is that we often misunderstand the battlefield, so we misdefine our competition. Traditional strategic frameworks say competitors are businesses that offer similar products or services to the same target audience within the same industry or market segment.

But, If you’re competing for your customer’s money, then isn’t your competition and positioning something they define? They pick the options they’re comparing you against, not you. And often the competition isn’t who you think it is. This is where the traditional model breaks down – it incorrectly identified the competition, and it’s costing businesses millions of dollars.

This is why I say we need to look at differentiation from the perspective of the customer, not through market positioning or phony or contrived segmentation. Just look at Tesla, compared to other electric car companies. Tesla knew from the get go that they weren’t competing with other electric vehicles. They were competing with the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE).

That meant for people to adopt the Tesla en masse, it had to create an experience that was BETTER than the gas-powered car. It had to be “cooler” than the ICE – hence the high-end finishes, while also carrying the same range as a tank of gas. They were basically building the “Apple” product of the automotive industry, because no one was making a decision to buy a car based SOLELY on its carbon footprint.

Tesla’s efforts made room in the market for other EVs to compete, albeit at lower price points. But while other EV manufacturers are competing with each other, Tesla is competing in the luxury car market.

As I reflect on the scope of this problem for my customers, I realize just how few businesses really understand who they are actually competing against for their customer’s money. This puts them behind the 8 ball from the beginning as they try to create a strategy that can help them win market share. If they want to grow, they’ve got to solve this problem.

02/20/2024

The whole idea of “niching” has to die.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably heard the advice to niche down to find success. There’s a huge problem with that. When you niche, you risk putting blinders on that can cause you to miss major opportunities.

Take Nokia for example. They were the undisputed masters of the cell phone market for about 10 years (approx.. 1997-2007). They had everything going for them. They made small, attractive, durable phones with a user-friendly interface.

In 2007, Forbes magazine asked the question “Nokia, one billion customers – can anyone catch the cell phone king?” Which is ironic because they asked that question the year the smartphone – iPhone gen 1 hit the market. Within 7 years, Nokia admitted defeat by selling their cell phone division to Microsoft.

Nokia niched into the “dumbphone” market, and it killed that division of their business, to the tune of 1 billion customers lost. To Nokia’s cell phone division, you don’t buy a phone to stay connected, productive, or avoid boredom, although that’s how we use it every day. You buy a phone for its beauty, size, or durability. That means you don’t get access to Lyft, your banking app, or Netflix. It also means Nokia misses the smartphone revolution.

And Nokia isn’t alone. Online coaches and “gurus” often make a similar mistake. They use niching as a sales tool. They’re told to niche down and focus on pain points and close the sale based on promises to end their pain, whether you realistically feel you can deliver on it or not. (Coaches actually gave me this advice).

But there is a HUGE difference between selling based on ending pain and being able to actually end the pain. To coaches, the niche is often a tool for marketing for the coach, not an expertise in an outcome for the client.

The truth is that most businesses don’t know why their customer buys from them, and the more niched they are, the worse it becomes. It objectivizes people. Instead of people with problems, they’re a “demographic”. It becomes a crutch for shallow thinking and stops you from understanding their struggling moments with enough context or clarity to solve them well. So, you’re stuck building small, beautiful, durable dumbphones in a smartphone world, or making hail-Mary promises to prospects with no clue of how you’ll keep them.

That’s why the traditional idea of “niches bring riches” needs to die – because it’s not true.

Reflecting on what this means to my clients, it’s that your customer doesn’t care about you. They care about outcomes and making progress, and to maintain relevance in a rapidly changing world, let alone grow, you’ve got to let go of “niching” and focus on serving people. That means possessing enough expertise about them and their specific problems and desired outcomes to move the needle for them in the ways they find meaningful. That’s how you see around the corners to know what’s coming next.

02/13/2024

Do you guys remember the Zune? I know, we’re talking about such ancient history we might as well be talking about the Ark of the Covenant. It was Microsoft’s answer to the iPod. They had 5 years to work on this thing, during which they could reverse-engineer, collect data, and learn from Apple’s failures or mistakes.

When the Zune Music Player finally rolled out in 2006, it looked pretty cool. I remember getting my hands on one in high school and thinking they had some cool features, but generally not being super impressed. After about 5 years, the Zune just quietly went away.

I went back and found the numbers. Between 2006-2009, Zune sold about 3 million units. Apple sold 200 million iPods during that same time. Despite having access to more data, a healthy budget, comparable engineers, and a late-mover advantage, the Zune was absolutely demolished by Apple. I wanted to know why the Zune failed.

I spent some time thinking about this and I realized, it’s not how much data you have, rather it’s how you use it. Microsoft had mountains of data, it was just the wrong data. The data Microsoft collected was focused on building a lookalike product that could compete with the iPod.

Microsoft collected data on features, benefits, and specifications, instead of the most important data of all – understanding why people were buying iPods in the first place, and where iPods were failing to meet customer needs or help them make progress. This turned the Zune into an expensive “me, too” product that people didn’t want to buy, when they could just buy the real thing.

So, here’s the big kicker that I want to drive home. It’s not that businesses don’t know how to collect data. It’s that most businesses lack the deep understanding of data to use it correctly. Microsoft had data out the w***o, but it was the wrong data. They didn’t understand the data that they needed to go where they wanted, so they built a product that was destined to fail from the beginning, and no amount of strategy or marketing could fix it.

01/29/2024

I was reading the news a couple days ago and something earth-shattering just happened. For the first time in its 75 year history, In-N-Out Burger (InO) closed a location. Now, I enjoy a good double-double, animal style every so often and this really caught my attention. Basically, InO is closing a location, not because it’s unprofitable, because it was wildly successful. They closed it because of crime. Patron’s cars were being stolen or broken into, so they closed the store.

Think about that for a minute. Imagine having customers so dedicated to your business that they will essentially play “Russian roulette” with the potential of getting their car stolen or broken in to, just to give you their money. InO is clearly doing something right to never close a location in 75 years. They’re batting 1000. Clearly there’s a lesson here we should learn.

InO is unique in the world fast food. On the surface, it’s extremely boring. I mean, they haven’t structurally changed the menu for 75 years. They have the secret menu, but that’s nothing special, other places have that, too. What InO has is consistency. It doesn’t matter where you get your Double-Double Animal Style, you’re getting the same experience.

The fact is that InO knows who they are and what outcomes they deliver to their customers – a reliably consistent, pleasant, and delicious dining experience, and the opportunity to indulge in a guilty pleasure or two without breaking the bank, to name a few. It’s clear that InO has deep empathy for and understanding of their customers, and it shows.

Put another way, businesses with a better understanding of the outcomes their customers want and are better able to deliver those outcomes than the competition will win every time, even over larger, better equipped competitors. That’s where things often break down, though.

Most businesses are trained to look at things from the perspective of the supplier – the business side, not from the perspective of the customer. This creates situations like Wendy’s, Burger King, and McDonald’s wasting time, money, and energy playing “keeping up with the Joneses” with a “flavor of the month” burger, when customers don’t really care.

It’s not even their fault. They’re trained to think that way. But thinking about how this impacts my clients, and the business world as a whole, it means we spend most of our time developing growth strategies, innovations, and new products that focus on problems that businesses think customers will care about. They’re built to fail from the beginning.

It also means that creating business growth requires us to put ourselves in the mind of the customer from the beginning to deliver the outcomes they want.

01/16/2024

In 2006, a group of researchers led by Jules Davidoff from Goldsmiths University of London contacted the Himba tribe of Northern Namibia. The Himba are unique because they only recognize 5 color categories instead of the modern world’s 11.

In a study, the Himba were tested with 12 different colored tiles arranged in a circle. 11 were the same color. One was different. The Himba were asked to choose the odd color out. The first circle had 11 green tiles and one blue tile. The Himba would stare at the circle for a long time. They could see the difference in the color, but because they lacked a word for “blue” they couldn’t express it.

Then, they were given a second set to look at. To most of us in the modern world, we would not be able to detect the odd color out, which was a slightly different shade of green but the Himba had no problem spotting the different shade. Researchers concluded that color perception is based as much on our eyesight as it is on our vocabulary.

Recently, I was consulting with a business that brought the Himba to mind. Many experts tell people to develop products or services that solve problems for niches. “The riches are in the niches.” But what if they’re wrong?

This company had an extremely niche product: a toothbrush for special needs individuals. They were looking at a go-to-market strategy that included Walgreens & Wal-Mart. It was like the Himba and the color blue. They could sense that there might be another alternative.

However, the demand would never be high enough in a retail space to warrant orders that would need to be profitable. They had to look at things a different way, outside of the traditional go-to-market framework.

We discussed a model that included working with dental insurers, dental care providers, and social media influencers to introduce the product to the market in a profitable way.

Here’s why this matters for biz dev, marketing, sales, and business growth in general in my mind. Good businesses find smart people to run their businesses. They are highly specialized and come with a whole suite of tools and frameworks that they can use to solve a lot of problems.

However, sometimes there are opportunities that they can’t detect because just like the Himba they don’t have a word for it, so they pass or ignore it, and forego massive growth. Often, correctly identifying opportunities for growth means firms have to develop new competencies, processes, and vocabulary to take advantage of what is right in front of them.

To do that, we have to create a shared language of innovation and opportunity. Organizations that create that kind of ecosystem find innovation and consistent, profitable growth comes naturally.

01/16/2024

One of the most shocking stats I've ever read is that most executives put data behind their own gut/intuition and the gut/intution of their colleagues when it comes to making decisions; even though firms that use data are:

* 23x more likely to acquire customers
* 6x more likely to keep those customers
* 19x more likely to be profitable
* Increase profits by 8-10%
* Decrease total costs by 10%

Sign up here to learn how you can use data in your organization to increase profits, and get and keep more customers.

Spots are limited.

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12/28/2023

I was in high school when the first smart phones came out. It seemed like a huge deal at the time and like they could do so much, but in reality there wasn’t much you could do with it. It was basically a glorified iPod that made calls.

It wasn’t this gateway into an entire world of apps that makes your phone a necessity. Now you have your podcasts, audiobooks, movies, games, social media, Uber & Lyft which changed short-term transportation forever while increasing employment and things like “smart-lights” and “smart-speakers” where we use our phones to set the mood lighting and music in our living rooms and bedrooms and are often even voice activated.

Over time, the use of smartphones changed. Originally it was “cool”. I remember all the cool kids had them, but I didn’t feel left out because I could do the same things with my iPod video and Motorola Razr. NOW, there’s no way I could replace my phone with just that. My smart phone’s ancillary uses became greater than its original use – and in doing so, Apple, Google, Samsung, have effectively built barriers to entry.

They’ve become the access point for most people to the digital world, not only online (in Google’s case) but also in your pocket. The ancillary use creates more value for many people than the original use alone, and Apple, Google, and Samsung can use that to continue to sell and upgrade phones.

Recently, I was consulting with a business and learned the same lesson: warehousing is a technical, dirty, nuanced business. A lot of time is wasted looking for things on the warehouse floor. Time wasted is actually a labor cost, and that wasted time and labor adds up fast. More time wasted means more employees need to be hired.

By looking at this business’s technology in a new way we were able to identify that the ancillary use of the RFID technology they currently have could connect with location mapping software, which would shrink wasted time and reduce labor costs over time.

While the jury is still out (we’re currently in negotiations for a study and implementation plan) it appears that there are cost-savings, and perhaps more importantly, anxiety-savings on the way.

As I think about why this matters to my potential clients, and executives as a whole, I think the main takeaway for me is that the best answers to problems and questions are not “complete pivots” of strategy, but ancillary pivots – finding new uses for technology you’ve already adopted in more targeted ways. Not only do you open up new revenue opportunities, but it’s easier to get employee buy-in, and to create cost-savings or business results in a shorter time frame.

When we understand and act on the fact that most business growth happens in steps, not leaps, we have more consistent, more profitable outcomes over time.

11/15/2023

🌟 Exciting News! 🌟

I'm thrilled to invite you to our upcoming Executive Briefing: "Do You Speak 'Customer'? Using Data & Empathy to Close More Sales." 🚀

Learn how to transform your strategy, harnessing the power of customer insights. 📊✨ 𝗦𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗟𝗜𝗠𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗗. Sign up now so you don't miss out on this game-changing event!

🗓️ Date: December 5th

🕒 Time: 10 am Mountain

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Learn how to connect with customers on a deeper level using data and empathy, boosting your sales game - join us online for Do You Speak 'Cu

10/20/2023

𝗢𝗣-𝗘𝗗: 𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘊𝘌𝘖𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘵

While it may seem gratifying to call CEOs cowards who are hiding behind a return to office order to get people to quit, it's not that simple.

I'll cover this more on next week's podcast, but there are social, emotional, and functional energies in a JTBD.

*𝗦𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, CEOs could be trying to protect the brand and themselves from the negative blowback of layoffs.
*𝗘𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, executives could genuinely miss the energy of working with people on-site.
*𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆, plenty of research shows that productivity increases remotely or on-site, 𝘉𝘈𝘚𝘌𝘋 𝘖𝘕 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘙𝘖𝘓𝘌. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

The author claims this is an attempt to boost profits by cutting costs, but increased productivity boosts profitability, too. It feels like the author is just trying to play into the usual "class warfare" schtick by framing CEOs as unproductive parasites leeching off the workers.

Leaders are trying to get workers to return to the office not because they believe it will make teams more productive, but because they want workers to quit.

10/20/2023

I'm in the Personal Development 7-Day Challenge and today I let a car merge in front of me.

Seriously, guys. This is so simple but so rewarding. Give it a try.