Latest Beyondtheobvious Podcast Episodes
What is the process used by my customer to discover my product
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - August 27, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingDo you have a digital twin? The concept first formed on consumer sites like Yelp, but it’s becoming a catchphrase in marketing and sales. The idea is that dedicated users of sites like Yelp eventually notice that there are other users whose tastes, interests, and “favorites” match their ow...
Who am I not selling to because I think they can’t or won’t pay for my product?
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - August 13, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingWho am I not selling to because I think they can’t or won’t pay for my product? Price is king, right? “Build ’em cheap and stack ’em high” is practically the motto of most segments of the tech industry Naturally, there are some notable exceptions for companies producing exclusive high priced...
What are your unshakable beliefs about what your customers want
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - August 06, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOne thing is to know what your customers want to do, another is to understand how they intend to get it done. It’s easy to look at their goals and tell yourself that your product will match their needs. However, if you don’t understand their internal philosophy about what they are doing an...
What are the criteria to select research and development projects
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - July 30, 2018 05:00 - 4 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingWhat are your criteria for deciding that an idea is worth pursuing? We all have our own set of selection criteria, the first of which is usually looking for profits. However, selecting a course of action based solely on ROI can be limiting. If you are doing something really innovative, how on ...
What are we throwing away because we assume it has no value
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - July 23, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingMy wife is famous for being a little frugal. She once routed me and our son Logan from Las Vegas to Phoenix to Los Angeles and finally to San Jose because she could save twenty bucks each over the nonstop fare. Kind of nuts, right? But if I’m honest I have the same mind-set in one respect...
Could I create a standardized offering of a custom product
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - July 16, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOne of the first products I created as a software developer was a touch-typing program called Typing Instructor . This was back in 1985, and at that time there was no such thing as a standard PC. Instead you owned a specific brand and had access to the programs that had been written specifi...
Who complains about my product
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - July 09, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingA few years ago, a passenger complaint letter to Virgin Atlantic circulated around the web. It was very long, fully illustrated with photos, clearly somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and very funny, but it made a few good points about the bad food and surly service this particular passenger had experi...
What input, if reduced, would allow me to cut the price by 25 percent
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - July 02, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingThere is a reason that the percentage in this question is as high as it is. Sure, it would sound less scary and more reasonable if I asked you how you could cut your price by 5 percent, or maybe 8 percent, but that would be missing the point. If you want potentially game-changing mo...
Who do I not want to use my product now, but may want to in the future
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - June 25, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingWe tend to assume that any customer is a good customer. However, if you find that you’re working like crazy and have a solid and reliable customer base, but you’re still not making the profits you expected, then ask the Killer Question, Who do I not want to use my product? Do you reme...
Who is using my product in a way I never intended and how
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - June 18, 2018 05:00 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingOnce a product has sold, it’s pretty much out of your control. You may have an idea why people will buy it, and what they’ll do with it, but the most you can ever do is guess. So why are you assuming that you know what your customer actually likes and values about your product, and h...
Can I recombine existing components to create new products for customers I don’t currently serve?
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - June 11, 2018 05:00 - 4 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingMagazine publishers are in the same predicament as the book-publishing and recording industries before it. How do you keep your customers believing that your content is worth paying for when there is endless free content available on the Internet? Some fashion magazines are experimenting wit...
Can I create an on-demand version of the product?
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - June 04, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingDo you need to have a finished product in order to make a sale? Is there any way that not offering a finished product would actually give you an advantage, or even become a selling point? My children have long since outgrown toys, but my grandkids have more than once roped into visits to Bui...
What will future customers’ buying criteria be
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - May 28, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingA big part of any business is being aware of, and responding to, the life cycles of the industry and its customers. Some of these are easy to see; you only need a cursory understanding of the effect of OPEC on gas prices in the early ’70s to understand why cars became more fuel efficient in th...
Who will not buy my product because they feel something is objectionable about it
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - May 21, 2018 05:00 - 4 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingHave you ever purchased a product that others hated? Or what about the opposite .. .have you ever seen others using a product or service that you absolutely despised? The flipside to any positive emotional connection is a negative one. If you are producing a product or service that is insp...
What Industries Are Analogous To Ours
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - May 13, 2018 05:00 - 5 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingNo matter what business we are in, we are all fighting essentially the same fight—designing a product that a customer will prefer over that of our competitor. To do this, we need to constantly be aware of how our business environment is evolving, how our customers are changing, and what we need ...
How Can I Take Advantage Of Emerging Trends And Fads
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - April 22, 2018 05:00 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 rating“Weak signals” are the equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. They are the unspoken needs and wants of your customers, and they are also the arrows pointing to what your customers are going to need and want in the future.
What Customer Segments Will Emerge In 5 Years
5 Minutes To New Ideas With Phil McKinney - April 08, 2018 05:00 - 6 minutes ★★★★★ - 1 ratingWith any radical idea you will see the corporate antibodies come out of the woodwork, giving all the standard reasons why the idea will “never happen.” Remember, the fundamental assumption of the corporate antibody is that the future will be the same as today. Your customers are going to chang...
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