I came across a blog post by Matthew E. May this week that really intrigued me. As a marketer I have a keen sense of understanding in how hard it is, or can be, to make the complex simple, and that in many ways is our primary job.
In this age of challenging business times there is no doubt that we will or have already been pulled into multiple meetings to discuss our customer experience and what we can do to make it better. Usually I find these discussions to gravitate towards what more we can do or how much price can be cut or what products can be packaged together(sorry I work with a lot of sales guys).
In Matthew’s blog post he calls out a strategy utilized by Apple. They have a stragey that they call the “Stop Doing Strategy”. In this strategy instead of asking what more you can add, or bundle you would ask some very different questions:
· What would our customers love for us to eliminate, reduce, or stop adding and doing in our current business model and engagement?
· What is it that our competitors would struggle with if we were to stop doing several things?
I found that when thinking about my business and customers and prospects in this context that my eyes opened to a much larger landscape potential of what we could do if we could stop doing things.
So maybe the secret to a great customer experience is less and not more. Nuff Said.
Hey Ed, it's Andy Hasselwander. Great minds think alike--check out my blog b2b marketing confidential. How are things down in Arizona?
Posted by: Andy Hasselwander | January 19, 2009 at 11:01 AM