How to make your company stand out from its competitors, and where to start

Grant Leboff: Andy, we’re talking about creating a really dramatically different business that really can differentiate itself and stand out. How does a business start that journey? You’re sitting there, you’re running maybe quite a successful company, albeit a little bit vanilla. How do you go about that? There’s so much to do. Where do you start?

Andy Hanselman: I think typically it starts with your customers and the markets that you’re in, and looking at; do we have a dramatic difference first of all, and do our customers recognise it, do they want it, and are they prepared to pay for it? I think it then comes back to do our people understand it, have they bought into it, and does it make commercial sense for us? What we’re looking at this whole idea of actually saying is what is that dramatic difference, how do we demonstrate it? If we’ve then got one, it’s how can we get it out there? This thing comes back to this whole idea of the vision and of looking at where do we want to take it.

I honestly think a starting point sometimes is just holding a mirror up and taking a step back and saying, “Where are we now, and what do our customers think, and what do our people think?” I’ve even worked in some businesses where I’m working with the MD, and I get him or her to check their directors think the same, but maybe they don’t talk enough to each other about the bigger picture. It’s this thing about holding a mirror up to yourself, and actually just saying, where are we now?

Grant Leboff: It’s really interesting what you say, because I go into a lot of businesses, and of course, you never meet a business owner or a business leader who doesn’t say, “We’re a customer-centric organization.” I often challenge that, because I say, “I know you want to be and you try to be, you’re not really.” I like the idea of you saying it all starts, the first place to start is with the customer. How would you do that? Your business is sitting there. They’ve got their customer base. How would you start that journey with the customers?

Andy Hanselman: I would ask the questions to your key customers. Why do you buy from us? What do you like about us? What you don’t like about us? What irritates or annoys you about us? How do we compare to our competitors in the areas that you think are important? If there was just one thing that we could do differently what would that be? It’s just a series of conversations rather than just tick box answers that start getting to the nub of; do we actually have this dramatic difference.

Grant Leboff: It’s interesting because what you’re really saying and I agree, is that actually often you don’t have to come up with the ideas, the customer’s will come with the ideas. You then, obviously, have to implement those, but the customers will come up with them. Is that how you see it?

Andy Hanselman: Yeah, I think it is. I think people should have those conversations. But I think people as well, the people who are maybe at the front line dealing with customers day in, day out, they will also have a good picture of what irritates, what annoys customers, what is working, what isn’t working, and again making sure that there’s some mechanism to get that back into the business so that you can work out really this picture of where you are now.

Grant Leboff: That’s interesting. How best would you do that, because I do find I think often you go into businesses where so much of the knowledge is based in Mary who’s front of house, her and someone else, and actually there’s no mechanism or there doesn’t appear to be when you go in, of delivering that back and feeding that back into the organization. Do you know good ways of achieving that?

Andy Hanselman: Absolutely. I mean we often run sessions with front end people, and we ask them those question. We’ve also developed a very simple diagnostic tool where people can go in and assess themselves against the seven characteristics. Now clearly it’s just different pictures. It’s not necessarily 100% scientific, but if you’ve scored very, very high and some of your team have scored low in certain areas, at least that should get you to start thinking about some of these things. I think for me that’s what it’s about doing, the 3D thinking starts with the thinking, getting people to generate thoughts and ideas, and maybe constructively challenge you to say, “Are we sure about this? Are we right about this? How do we know?”

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