12

EMPOWERING MARKET SHARE

When you improve your product so that it does the customer’s job better, then you gain market share.

Clayton Christensen, American scholar

We’ve spent considerable time so far discussing how the most unstoppable organizations focus on empowering their customers by empowering and engaging their employees. In this chapter, we are going to explore the shortest path to not only achieve growth, but also grab market share from your competition by empowering your market share.

Adapting to Tomorrow’s Customer: Thinking Forward

I define the concept of “thinking forward” as the ability to think about, focus on, and consider what’s likely to change or shift in the next five to 10 years, versus what’s happening now. Unstoppable organizations are always thinking forward, which in turn often means they are making shifts and changes when other organizations deem them unnecessary or even inappropriate. In this chapter, then, I’d like you to think forward in order to prepare for what’s to come.

Based on our discussions and the information I’ve shared with you so far, let’s take a few minutes now to complete a “think forward” strategy for your organization. I’ll share some questions with you, and you can take some time to reflect upon them, and then jot down your ideas and responses. Similar to previous exercises, this is best completed by involving a cross-section of your organization, specifically a combination of leaders, employees, key suppliers, and customers. This of course can also be done on your own to gain some perspective before introducing any new ideas to your team.

The Think Forward Strategy

1. Think about your organization five years from now and consider what will change in the following areas:
   • Your employees: what are their skills, needs, attitudes, desires, and demographics?
   • Your customers: what are their needs, tendencies, influences, and preferences?
   • Your market: is it growing or shrinking? What does your competition look like?
   • Politics: how are local, regional, and national politics influencing your business, employees, and customers?
   • Environment: are there changes in the environment that influence your organization, its employees, customers, products, or services?
2. Think about and consider your product(s) or service(s) five years from now. How will demand have evolved (good or bad)? What will the influences on this demand shift be? What will your competition be involved in; will they be ahead of the curve or behind it?
3. Think about technology that influences your customers and employees today. How might this technology change or evolve, and how might these changes influence your customers or employees?

With your responses to these questions noted, identify a timeline that steps through each year starting with the current year and ending five years into the future. Under each year, identify four categories:

1. Product or service
2. Customer
3. Employees
4. Competition

Next, under each category place your comments and points made in the earlier questions, essentially creating from your perspective what a timeline of events might look like. Sure, this is a guess on your part, but creating this timeline is more than most ever do for identifying what may happen in the coming years, so give yourself some credit.

With the timeline completed, you now have a timed sequence of events that will allow you and your team to be clear on how your market will evolve. With this information in hand, you are now in a great place to identify the strategies and tactics necessary to combat, counteract, and adopt these evolutions in order to gain an edge on your competition, and more importantly, to ensure you and your organization aren’t left behind. With this timeline created, you can now shift toward the planning stages to capitalize on any shifts in the market. To demonstrate, let’s take a point from your information and build it out. Referring back to our earlier discussions, one of the points that unstoppable organizations consider is that their customers are becoming more aware, and thus expect an increased ability to customize the products or services they acquire. So let’s spend a few minutes incorporating considerations of your future customers.

Capitalizing On the Next Generation

Considering the “Think Forward” exercise earlier and considering our customers, our focus should be on the predominant generation that will dominate both buying trends and employment trends in the next five to 10 years, rather than be overly concerned about which generation has these greatest influences today. Drawing upon our earlier discussions of the Millennial generation, a landmark study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology identified this generation as the “me generation,” finding that Millennials are “much more likely to value money, image, and fame than things like self-acceptance, community, and the environment.”¹ The outcomes of this study provide some key insights into how an organization can position its products and services in order to appeal to the shifting needs and desires of the Millennial generation and future generations to come. It also sheds light on what changes an organization should undertake to attract the right employees—if we apply our earlier logic that employees will determine how strongly your customers connect with your organization, its products, and services. For insights into how unstoppable organizations are positioning themselves to draw upon generational preferences in a way that thinks forward, we need look no further than Rachel Mielke, CEO of Hillberg and Berk Jewelry. Ever since a brief appearance on the television show The Dragons’ Den, Rachel and her team at Hillberg and Berk have been growing and expanding their jewelry sales and clientele around the globe. “The key to growth,” says Mielke, “is in having the right culture—one that can connect with the organization’s purpose. At Hillberg & Berk, all of our employees connect with our purpose, which is to inspire sparkle and empower women to live with passion and positivity.”² When I asked Mielke how she ensures her employees connect with the organization’s purpose, she said that each year the staff spends time in training that specifically focuses on helping employees connect with the organization’s values—what they mean to the organization, to customers, and to every team member’s role. At Hillberg and Berk, it isn’t about identifying the corporate values or purpose on a plaque that resides in the boardroom or lobby, but rather helping every employee connect their role and the value they bring with creating a positive customer experience that exceeds expectations and helps clients live the very same purpose and values.

You might be wondering why Mielke and her team focus so intensely on building a culture that connects with and lives the organization’s purpose, but in her eyes the reasons are quite simple. “We are aware that the workforce of today, and more importantly, that of tomorrow, is different. Organizations need to be brave in how they structure their working environment in order to appeal to, engage with, and empower employees. At Hillberg & Berk we want to provide our team with the freedom to guide how they work, where they work, and what they work on,” she says.

Rachel and her team recognize how crucial it is to find and keep the best employees in order to create the best customer experience and, in turn, grow their organization by capturing new market share. Her ideas and approach are something we’ve heard from other CEOs and leaders in this book, such as Doug Harper, general manager of Blommer Chocolate, and Michael Beneteau at CenterLine, each overseeing an organization that is very different from one another, yet each experiencing nonstop growth, and each holding a similar philosophy for how their employees are key to their growth. What Rachel also shares in her example is the necessity to think forward about how tomorrow’s customers and employees want their experience to be, specifically focusing on how to create a better online and in-store customer experience to satisfy Millennials, while also creating a working environment that is appealing to them.

Thinking forward about the kind of environment and experience the next generation might want helps to shape the ideas of how an organization needs to focus more on culture—finding first the right employee, and then fitting the role to the employee, rather than fitting the employee to the role. This, in turn, shapes an environment in which employees are engaged, motivated, and perform at their highest levels of productivity, serving customer needs and being content staying with their organization for the long-term.

Why Being Brave is Par for the Course

Taking Rachel’s comments to heart, it’s important to reflect on how “organizations need to be brave.” Brave indeed. With the Millennial generation now being the predominant buying and employee generation combined, their needs, real or perceived, will continue to directly influence the success of any organization, often in more ways than one. CEOs like Rachel, who realize that there is a direct correlation between the culture of their organization and the ability to sell and meet evolving customer needs, are ahead of most.

It is in being brave in shaping and nurturing an organization’s culture that unstoppable organizations can ensure their customers have an exceptional experience. Reflect back on our earlier example of the distributor of industrial hoses. After I met with and spoke to various customers and employees, the company recognized that by having sales quote installations of hoses in isolation of service, they were not only losing money but more importantly, detracting from the customer’s experience. Every time a service technician delivered or installed a hose, they would become frustrated and vocal when the hose itself wouldn’t fit, often having to leave the customer’s site mid-installation. This would result in delays in installation and, in some instances, even additional cost (if they chose not to absorb the cost themselves). Being brave, the president of the industrial hose division went against the industry norms, the feedback of his peers, and push-back by many of his longstanding employees in order to ensure that sales and service worked together on quoting customer installations, resulting in higher upfront costs. He reshaped his culture by breaking down barriers between two working groups that had a long history and rivalry by placing sales and service together. The results, however, coming from pairing up both sales and service for the purposes of quoting new customer projects, were not only reduced downtime and additional costs, but also an improved customer experience. Indirectly, the changes made also led to an increase in customer retention and growth in customer referrals, which further influenced opportunities for more sales and new business.

If the examples of how a retail business such as Hillberg and Berk or an industrial supply company can be brave and reshape their culture in order to grow their sales and revenue don’t convince you, let’s look at another situation. In Chapter 11, we were introduced to Michael Beneteau and his team at CenterLine. As a manufacturer of automation, CenterLine sells to industrial customers. Regardless, Michael and his team realize that it’s all about providing a positive customer experience, so much so that “customer first,” their empowered brand, has been built to ensure that a customer’s experience with them is far superior to any other they might have. This is why Michael and his team work diligently to ensure that the culture of their employees is not only to understand the philosophy of “customer first,” but that they naturally place their customer first in everything they do, from design, to manufacturing, to installation and training. Michael and his team, like other unstoppable organizations, recognize that they must be brave in shaping a culture that not only satisfies customers today, but is prepared to satisfy customers and employees of tomorrow.

How Culture Grows Market Share

With our discussions around culture, then, you are likely wondering how taking the steps outlined here in reshaping your own culture can directly result in increasing market share. Well, it won’t if you simply stop with a focus on creating an exceptional customer experience. Although good for existing customers, this approach won’t help you attract any new customers and capture market share from your competitors.

Creating a culture that lives the “customer first” brand and ensures an “exceptional customer experience” for every interaction means that your employees truly believe, embrace, and promote everything wonderful that your organization is doing, and there is no better resource for promoting the value your customers are experiencing than your employees. I’m not suggesting blatantly promoting your efforts per say, but “If you don’t toot your own horn, don’t complain that there is no music,” to quote Guy Kawasaki.³ This is where all of the benefits of your efforts thus far in becoming an unstoppable organization begin to pay off. Because as we’ve outlined in previous chapters, if you’ve created an environment in which your employees are empowered, then they will be highly engaged, and in being so they are in the best position to promote all of the benefits of your organization. Taking from the various interviews and interactions I’ve had with unstoppable organizations, here is a list of just a few ways in which their employees are helping to promote the brand, products, services, and value of their organizations:

• Sharing company information and promotions on social media.
• Donning company apparel (that employees have paid for themselves!) at events outside of work.
• Gifting customers with various products (like the sparkle ball) that their employers offer.
• Speaking on behalf of their employer at events and functions.
• Posting positive reviews of their employer on sites such as Glassdoor.com.
• Purchasing their company’s products or services for their own family and friends.
• Participating in community activities that indirectly promote their company’s benefits.
• Recommending to friends and family to apply and join their employer.
• Supporting and sponsoring community and regional causes and events.
• Defending their employer in the media when negativity arises.
• Bringing ideas forward to their employers on how to further increase their brand awareness.

Similarly, by creating exceptional customer experiences through your employees, you reap the benefits of growing market share as a direct result of your customer’s efforts. Examples that several of the unstoppable organizations have shared with me in how their customers are helping them to grow their market share include:

• Sharing products, promotions, and company news on social media.
• Posting positively glowing reviews of your products on your organization’s Websites, as well as that of other resellers or partners.
• Posting negative reviews on your competition’s Website, identifying your organization’s product or service as being superior.
• Joining and participating in a community of your followers, sharing their experiences and ideas on your organization’s blog, social media pages, or other forums.
• Purchasing and wearing apparel that displays your brand and organizational information.
• Publishing articles and posts relating to a positive experience with your organization.
• Attending events held by your organization and inviting other friends, family, and coworkers to join.
• Introducing friends and family members to your products or services.

For more ideas, tips, and bonus materials to help you grow your market share through your employees, make sure to visit www.unstoppableorganization.com.

There are literally dozens more I could mention, but what’s important to realize is this: when you are brave in building a culture that places your customer first, ensuring each has an exceptional experience, not only do you create customers who are raving fans of your organization and its products (which is essentially free marketing), but you also create such a buzz both internally with employees and externally with customers that would-be customers can’t help but notice. The resulting impact is capturing market share. Referring back to an earlier example, I can’t help but think about Harley Davidson. How can an organization sell their product for two to three times more than their competitor and continue to grow their market share after more than 100 years in business? It takes a good product, yes (Harley was once known for a poor product), and good marketing, yes (Harley has only in recent years become a good marketer). But what is outstanding about Harley Davidson is the sheer amount of positive information that their customers and employees share. Visit any dealership and you’ll be overwhelmed at how friendly and nonaggressive everyone is. Riders create their own clubs, their own rides, and tout the benefits by purchasing and wearing Harley Davidson apparel. It really is a marvel to experience. Owning my own Harley, I have become somewhat addicted to the brand myself. This is empowering your market share, and it is another key distinction between the average organization and an unstoppable one.