The Need for “Evolutivity”!

We often have startups/ mid-size tech companies who come to us about how their recurring repeatable revenues are flagging. They all have invested time and effort into the initial product, built their value proposition well, got their pricing in place and also have fair execution around Customer Success.

 So why do they see business taking a downward trend. Short answer: Ignoring the need to evolve their market offering and all that surrounds it. Let’s examine this further.

At a fundamental level, we are living in the Outcome Economy. A new set of business rules have emerged. The World Economic Forum defines this as “Shift from competing through selling products and services, to competing on delivering measurable results important to the customer.” Reflect on this.

 The need for agility, the need to remain competitive and the changing world are pushing your customer to also deliver CHANGING measurable results to their customers!

 What does this mean for your product, offering or services? They need to EVOLVE too.

 Even companies with large market shares like Amazon Web Services (AWS) , Microsoft Cloud and Google Cloud are evolving their offerings ever so often. Every year there are updates/ enhancements to their offering based on their customers varied needs, in the hundreds and thousands. So, if that is what they are doing, don’t we have to, too? Absolutely.

 So, what must change?

 Product/ Technology Tunnel Focus: How many of us remember Kodak today. It was a company with a 90%+ share in the personal camera space. My simplistic view is that they were overtly focused on their product and technology rather than seeing the trend towards digital and then of course the mobile phone. How can we best first look at true customer and user-based centricity and then tweak/ tune the product. What does the customer want to solve next and what addons or enhancements must you offer your customer to be part of that journey? As Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School, said way back in 1960, “Marketers sell the drill, Customers buy the hole”.

 Genuine Customer Success: I am yet to come across a provider with a recurring and repeatable business who say they have not implemented Customer Success. And while this may be true, have we really taken the customer from a stage of adoption to performance and sometimes to a level of transformation they need? When was the last time Customer Success Leadership or the CTO or CRO/ CEO sat down with customers 1:1 to 1 to many to double click on what one needs to do to enhance the offering based on how they need to evolve or their plans to evolve? If we do this, amazing. But then what enhancements are we making either to our product, services or offering based on this and with what agility.

Tracking your Competition: At times, I shudder when a CEO of a tech start-up, says they do not have any “real” competition. I do recall a CEO from the cybersecurity space telling me, they don’t provide their partners with competitive battle cards because they don’t have competition! I love the confidence, but this isn’t true, or their product would be selling like hot cakes on one of the vendors Marketplaces. You may have a feature or two which others don’t have today, but these smart companies are not sitting idle. They are evolving their offering not just perhaps based on what you have but what the customer wants for today and tomorrow. Staying ahead of your competition is crucial not just to survive but to ensure your customer renews your contract every year. Customer loyalty exists when you can keep pace with them or at times even staying a couple of steps ahead of them in mapping out what they will need over time.

These are 3 of the big ones I see and yes there may be more. But execute on these and you will start to see a turnaround & business scaling.

Partner Plexus