When I was a MDP consultant at IBS
Kochi, I had a chance to visit premises of more than 50 small, medium and large
businesses. My job was to develop businesses for the intellectual capital of
the faculty at IBS. My experiences during the visits to the prospective
customers' premises made me feel that intellectual capital is the least wanted
capital by them, but mostly needed. We found two situations in the customer’s
premises: one is " business is doing well" and the other "
business is not doing well". After visiting a score of prospects we found
a pattern in their responses, mostly unfavourable ones.
Places
where business is doing well the
following behavior is found.....
·
Do not allow the new
service providers to access the business leaders
·
Show ‘we-know-it-all’
attitude
·
are busy Expanding the
organisation at a faster pace
·
Revenue growth and
profit generation is equated with business growth
·
Give high priority to prestigious
certifications and image building activities
·
Focus mostly on
customers with high purchase power
·
Engage in creating entry
barriers to the new comers / competitors
·
Look for business
diversifications
· Command and demand services from the vendors (supply chain)
·
engage in cost cutting measures
·
sell the products at thin margins
·
arrange programs to change the
peoples’ behavior. The programs will be conducted by in house experts or by an
outside agency that quotes the least.
·
take disconcerted marketing
initiatives
·
spend more time in urgent and
managerial issues
·
Search for certifications that will
give them credibility in the market.
·
are hesitant to discontinue the
unprofitable / failed product lines
contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu
I fully agree. The first case where business owners tend to take a stand - We are doing well - they actually start downward journey by their acts of focusing on customers with high purchase power, etc. In the process they rob themselves off from basic business principle they started with and also surrender premium that they enjoyed in lieu of so called respect of attaching to big customer (in supply chain). They also fall in the trap of big customer manager’s trap of reducing cost, opening their uniqueness and start singing the tune the manager wishes.
ReplyDeleteI have myself seen good clients with entrepreneurial spirit go for such attitude. Somewhere I feel business owners wish to rest on initial success and want it to continue to reap benefit without addressing newer needs of customers and going deep in generating knowledge.
Somewhere consultants and service providers are also to blame. As sometimes general training houses and management consultants are only throwing fads that business people should run after and in the peer pressure business owners fell for it.
Business People also display two tendencies while engaging consultants - either
1. to brush off visiting trainer / consultants as trainer / consultant being too small to take services
or
2. go for trainer / consultant as he is big socially and in industry circles. No doubt the business people get awed by the profile of such trainer / consultants.
In the first case if they work, it is for an objective but they seldom have courage to say in market to work on given objective with small consultant. In the latter case they wish to advertise engaging such consultant and bother less (actually feel less qualified) for the output the consultant is going to bring.
In the latter case if such outside trainer / consultant suggest for diversification or some worthless internal program which may actually not add to business - it does huge loss to business.
Business owner sometimes get carried away by the so called wisdom of visiting consultant. They forget their basic business and go for embellishment of certification; employee motivation, un-necessary cost cutting programs (related to business it may be necessary); fads like Quality Circles, TPS, 3M, etc.
It is therefore necessary to prevail good sense in business owners to right conviction to avoid such mishaps.
Yogesh