Make your customers know, what they want!!

Our brain is not under our control. The utmost seat of Lateral Thinking, brain makes everybody go into wilderness; knowingly but most of the time unknowingly. More you wander, more you go deep. This brain wilderness, help in finding answers to many complicated questions; but sometimes it makes everything around very confused & blurred. This wilderness gets aggravated, for corporate citizens primarily, when one has fair understanding of business subjects like Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain, Business Strategies, and Finance etc. In corporate, answer to the very basic question, every other CEO does want to know; what makes a company successful and other fail. Every subject and more so every professional with specialized subject knowledge seems like giving a panacea for challenges coming the way of building a sustainable-successful business or what products can make a company successful in real sense. Benchmark could be Apple, today. 

One day, on my journey to mental wilderness, I confronted the same question, what makes a company successful and other fail. It looked more complex, when I read about the ‘quantity of research’ being carried out across the globe, to know needs of customers and coming out with suitable ‘innovated’ products, continuously to meet these needs with a view to be successful.  The same report says 95% of products fail within one year of their launch. Why so, when we know the needs?

To my surprise, this wilderness helped me in realizing the fact that never a single business ever became successful just because it satisfied the needs of its customers. Yes, there are millions of companies which claim being successful, as they keep either manufacturing some products or providing some services and in return, keep ‘making’ less than average EBITDA, every year. These sorts of companies do every bit to be seen successful on their claim of earning some EBITDA.

Coming to the question back, what does make a company successful? Knowing Customer Needs & fulfilling them? It may surprise you, if I share that all research available reveal that customers do not know what their needs are. Customers indeed, are not having clarity, what they are looking for, in products or product features. They are as confused as corporations. Their needs come & go. They do not stick to their proclaimed needs. Their needs are as fluid & imaginable as their dream are. One does not have any control on them, alike dreams.  Go back in the recent past only; did anyone know about ‘Internet’ becoming so indispensable in our life? Today, whole world is revolving around this. Every other business is dependent on it. You for that matter, take any product or product features that ‘created’ a ‘want’; not becoming huge success?? Did you find any, please let me know, too.

If corporations need to be successful in real sense, then they have to move one level up from, simply trying satisfying needs of customers. Simple customer satisfaction can make a company earn some EBITDA but not success for sure. This EBITDA earning mindset shall lead you for a short while, but be sure it will also take you to your early death date.

Keeping my thoughts intact, organisations have to come up with new product & product features unknown to customers; thus creating or determining needs, instead of delivering on the needs of the customers.

This can very well be substantiated by the success story of Apple; as we all have seen it happening in very recent past.

Steve Jobs’ infamous remark to the question, when asked what all research went into the development of iPad, may help you understand it more. He said, “None. It’s the not the consumer’s job to know what they want.”

Conclusively, defy conventional wisdom of being first to recognize and serve customer needs, to be first in the race; but you yourself define customer needs and criteria of purchase and constantly update them to be first today & tomorrow.

CEOs arise & awake, what you looking for? Often, it is said, the average tenure of CEOs is three years; but sufficient enough to make a dent in the history. Just give a required direction to your organisation and make it move in that direction. History will follow you.