Category Archives: Applying "The Alpha Factor"

• Grow your business by hiring Alpha-style superstars

  Monday, February 9th, 2009 by Wes Ball

  How can you make your staff an Alpha “superstar” staff?  The answer is not to put the right people in the right seats.  It’s putting only superstars in those seats.  Here’s how you can make that happen…

  Your staff is second only to what you sell in defining how successful you will be at growing your business.  As an employer, I have had great teams; I have had almost great teams; and I have had mediocre teams (thankfully, only in my early days as a business owner).  The difference in results was dramatic, as a focus upon hiring excellence increased. 

  Employee teams who are committed, talented, persistent, and ready to do whatever is needed can accomplish almost anything.  Employee teams that have to make up for even a few weak members have a much harder time even accomplishing the minimum.  Any company aspiring to become an Alpha has to address this issue early and with a commitment to not give up even after your entire team is superstars.

  I was at a conference a week ago, and I heard John Bisnar, a very successful “Alpha” attorney in California, describe how he gets and keeps the best employees.  His process for getting and keeping “superstar” employees is a worthwhile model for any aspiring Alpha to look at.  It’s certainly a strategy that has merit for any business of any size.  In fact, a version of this is used by Andy Grove at Intel, one of the few long-term Alpha’s still maintaining its Alpha position today.

  The strategy is pretty simple in concept, but, like most things that really work, it is hard to stick to and implement consistently.  Here’s how John’s version could be applied to your company:

  Start with a clear definition of what a “superstar” employee would look like in your company.  Write a list of the specific attributes and behaviors you would expect from someone you would consider an “outstanding” performer you would not want to lose to someone else.  This is not a job description.  This is a description of how a superstar employee works and acts.

  For instance, your list might include things like…

  • extraordinarily skilled
  • anticipates needs
  • arrives early and is already working at “start” time
  • works well as a team participant
  • never says, “That’s not my job”
  • thinks creatively “outside the box”
  • models how all employees should behave
  • extremely productive
  • understands and is committed to the company’s mission

  John Bisnar’s team came up with 25 attributes that they believed describe a “superstar” employee in their company, no matter what specific job title they hold.  When they hire, they only hire someone they believe will become a superstar, as defined in that list.  They look beyond just how much experience the person has or what success they have created in the past.  They look for signs that this person has what it takes to become a superstar.  

  That means that they look at how the person is motivated, and how that matches with the company’s environment and motivational system.  It means they look at potential as much as past experience, as long as the skill sets are already in place for the job being filled.  It also means that they are weighing how a person likes to please others and how well that fits within the model the company follows with its customers and other employees. 

  If they don’t see a clear indication of a superstar, the person doesn’t get hired.  There is no hiring for a “B” team.  

  Everyone is held to the same standard of excellence.  When a person proves that he is not going to become a superstar, he is gone as quickly as is practical.

  Why this obsession with excellence?  Because in order to become and stay an Alpha, you have to be absolutely committed to having the right team driving your company.  The difference is not just how much people enjoy coming to work and working with each other.  It is also a matter of how much horsepower you are efficiently putting to the wheels of your daily efforts.

  More gets done with more effectiveness and greater return on investment, because every great employee spurs on every other great employee.

  How many times do you hear employees complain about how another employee is not contributing as much to the team as should be expected.  Certainly, as the employer or manager, you don’t hear it as often as they are telling it to others.  Mediocre or lazy employees are a drag on the entire organization, both in direct efficiency an in poor morale created.

  So how do you implement such a process, when you already have “B” or “C” team employees on staff?  John Bisnar’s plan is a good one.  When he instituted this, he divided all employees into three groups:  

  • those who were already superstars
  • those who might become superstars
  • those who would obviously never become superstars

  The last group was replaced as quickly as possible.  The second group was challenged to become superstars and given a clear definition of what that looks like (that’s where the list of superstar attributes really comes in handy).  If they didn’t make it in a short period of time, they too were replaced.

  Then, here is the most important part:  How do you keep your superstars?  Certainly, every other employer out there would love to have more superstars.  So, the superstars you have need to be continually “loved.”  That simply means that they want to recognize that the company (and especially top management) sincerely appreciates what they are doing and the effort they are making to help the company reach its goals.  You want them to not even consider an offer from a competitor.

  That doesn’t have to mean money, although that might be the motivation for some.  Actually, many research studies over the years have shown that being valued as an employee is demonstrated by being clearly noticed by top management and by being included in hearing what is going on, what the company is planning to do, and being invited to participate in that process.  

  As the Alpha model has proven over and over again, money is never as big an incentive as is feeling “successful” in what you are doing and knowing that others notice and care about you.  Those are the employee versions of the “self-satisfaction” and “personal significance” factors of the model.

  Can you succeed without following a superstar-only model?  Certainly.  It just takes longer and costs more.  

  There are Alpha companies now and in the past who did not have superstar teams.  But that typically became more of a problem after they became Alpha’s, because once a company gets comfortable, it often loses sight of what got it there.  

  What I have seen is that having a “B” team staff makes it a longer and more expensive process than having an “A” team.  There are just too many stumbles and too much pressure on the superstars that are on staff to enable the kind of sustainable success that should be anticipated as you move toward Alpha status.

  You can become an Alpha.  If you are an aspiring Alpha and don’t already have a copy of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at how to really create market dominance and self-sustaining success, you can get a copy at www.thealphafactor.com or at almost any online bookstore.

  If you would like to know more about John Bisnar, visit his website at www.bestattorney.com.

   

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• Alpha learning applied: Why smaller businesses have all the advantage in bad times

  Monday, February 2nd, 2009 by Wes Ball

  Big Ah-ha #1 in The Alpha Factor says, “You don’t have to be the biggest to dominate decisions in your category.”  This is even more true right now as big companies are pulling back.  As they undermine their future, smaller competitors have a unique opportunity to leapfrog upward.

  Throughout the Alpha Factor Project research, we discovered that many product categories are actually dominated by smaller competitors.  No, that’s not contradictory.  Dominance does not always correlate with dollar volume.  Dominance is how much influence a company or product has in controlling 1) buying decisions among customers and 2) business decisions among competitors.

  Much of the reason for this dominance driven by smaller companies is the fact that most larger companies have a hard time innovating in any meaningful way.  Even though many larger companies have product lines and distribution that are the envy of smaller competitors, their innovation is heavily skewed toward “function” – meaning product features, performance, and quality. 

  Smaller companies often combine some functional innovation with innovation in the areas of ego-satisfaction: the two critical Alpha Factors of self-satisfaction (how we feel about ourselves when we buy or use a product) and personal significance (how we believe others perceive us when we buy or use that product).  Where larger companies typically focus most heavily upon functional innovation, smaller competitors (perhaps out of desperation with their inability to compete on functional innovation alone) often do exactly what the market really wants by innovating with ego-satisfaction.  

  That’s how Ben & Jerry’s ice cream became the Alpha of the ice cream category in the 1990s.  It’s how Harley-Davidson took back the motorcycle industry in the mid-1980s, making their product the most desired product in the world according to some research done in the mid-1990s.  It’s how Apple has finally increased its influence in the personal computer category and how it has made its iPod and iPhone the products that people aspire to own.  

  There is so much focus upon large businesses in the business press that it is no wonder that few marketers recognize the real power of smaller businesses to create dominant influence, which translates into greater price leverage, more competitive control, and greater ability to weather tough times or bad mistakes.  There is all too little recognition, however, of the great weaknesses of these large companies, who have become more interested in what is going on inside of their walls than what is needed outside of them.

  The real weakness of larger companies – 1) their inability to innovate sustainably or meaningfully and 2) their internal focus upon perfecting process rather than fulfilling customer needs – is what creates the tremendous opportunity available to smaller competitors right now.  These weaknesses are only exacerbated and magnified, when times get tough.  

  For instance, here’s what I have been seeing more and more among larger companies:

   

  1. Isolation from the help they desperately need: It has become more and more difficult for an outside supplier to find their way in to help a larger company.  Many larger companies actually won’t give employee names or even connect a salesperson with the person whose responsibility it is to buy what they offer.  That means that employees in that company who are facion from the largest marketer in any given category.  The design aspects of new products from larger companies seem to lack any inspiration.  The differentiation being created by these innovations is all but non-existent.  Even their functionality is only minimally superior to existing products.  It’s as though they are just throwing things out there because they believe they have to without regard to the damage such weak introductions might do to the credibility of the company they have worked so hard to build.

  Smaller competitors have typically been the source of innovations that drive new and higher customer expectations (a critical strategy in creating Alpha dominance).  Small companies have always been the real lifeblood of American business.  In good times, larger competitors often play off of those inspired innovations and intimidate the smaller company into submission.  

  Since times have gotten a lot tougher, the process just got a lot easier for smaller innovators.  While the giants sleep, the real innovators have much more room to play unencumbered.  Customers are no less in need of having their functional and ego-satisfaction needs fulfilled.  But now the confusing clutter has been reduced to give smaller, more innovative innovators a real chance to drive dramatic growth.

  What’s your excuse for holding back?

   

  If you don’t already have your copy of The Alpha Factor, you are missing the secret to creating dramatic, sustainable growth even when the economy is as slow as it is today.  You will learn what took 15 years of research and testing with real companies to uncover:  the secrets that turn even small companies into dominant Alpha companies who generate more profit, greater sales, and more marketplace influence than they ever expected.  Your can get a copy today at www.ballgroup.com or www.thealphafactor.com.

   

   

   

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• Uncovering “drivers of decisions” that create dramatic, sustainable growth

  Friday, January 9th, 2009 by Wes Ball

  Everyone wants to know what the “drivers of decisions” are in their product or service category.  These typically become the basis for innovation, marketing, advertising, and strategic sales planning.   The problem is that what they most often discover are not the clues to future growth, but rather the path to becoming a follower in the pack. 

  Only by looking beyond current drivers of decisions to possible drivers can you uncover the path to future market dominance and sustainable growth.  Possible drivers of decisions point to how you can change customer expectations to your favor in a sustainable way.  

  That means greater ROI on the revenue side.  Identifying and addressing these high-ROI possible drivers of decisions leads to significantly higher success rates, dramatically greater price leverage, and sustainably increased market dominance.

  When drivers of decisions are measured in most research, what is discovered are the current drivers – the factors currently being considered by customers, because that’s all that are being offered for consideration by the competitors in the marketplace.  Customers are being artificially limited to considering those factors, because that’s all there is available. 

  Even worse, much research on this subject only reflects customer perceptions of what the marketers in that category think is important.  What marketers offer and push as being the important factors to consider become the stated drivers of decisions for most customers, even if they are not the things customers would really like to be offered.

  That’s why price, convenience, product features, availability, referral of a friend, recommendation of store personnel, and other marketer-defined or marketer-created factors are among the most stated drivers of decisions in any product category.  Sadly, none of these factors are what customers really wish they were being offered.  And that gap in understanding is why most categories have no Alpha and the competitive situation never gets any better despite constant innovation.

  Discovering what customers really want to drive innovation

  The only way to discover what customers really want is to understand that there is a set of factors hidden behind the stated drivers of decisions.  These hidden factors are the real core of what drives every customer decision.  They are also the secret to creating a new future for your company and your category as a whole, which by default will make you the Alpha leader.

  Looking at the Alpha pyramid model of how people make buying decisions, there are three sets of factors considered: 

  First, there is “function,” which could be generally defined as product performance.  This is where most marketers start and end their quest for growth or innovation.  They look for improvements in technology, performance, features or options offered, new business models, and other “hard” factors that can be offered to attract customers away from competitive offerings.

  

  What we discovered through the entire Alpha Factor Project of research into real factors that create dominant, sustainable success is that function is only the first consideration.  And, initially, it is only considered by customers as to whether it meets the minimum performance requirements needed.  If it and several other offerings do, they are all considered essentially equal initially.  If only one offering does, then it is the only one considered.

  Any consideration beyond minimum functional requirement moves immediately into the two mutually supporting factors at the top of the pyramid:  “self-satisfaction” (how we feel about ourselves when we buy or use the product or service) and “personal significance” (how we believe others feel about us or value us when we buy or use the product or service).  Added features or performance or technology or business models have to deliver more in one or both of these two “ego-satisfaction” factor sets in order to create more perceived “value.”  Just because something works better than a competitive product does not automatically mean that customers will perceive it as being worth more.

  Any move beyond minimum functionality is a trade up.  And any trade up requires one or both of the ego-satisfaction factor sets to be fulfilled better than they are by competitive products.

  To many, this may sound counter-intuitive.  But most of the Alpha companies I discuss in The Alpha Factor do not have superior functional performance.  They provide superior ego-satisfaction fulfillment, and that allows them to not only charge more but also to generate more control and dominance in the marketplace.  Harley-Davidson, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Mercedes, BMW, Tiffany’s, John Deere, and Apple are just a few examples of Alpha products or companies that have little or no functional advantage over competitors but have made themselves capable of maintaining dominant control over customer decisions and even decisions made by competitors.

  When we measure drivers of decisions, we always look beyond current drivers to discover possible drivers.  The value of these possible drivers to a marketer is immense, because they are the key to creating higher customer expectations that can be controlled and driven by the innovator who created them.  A new technology may not necessarily create sustainable new customer expectations, because another competitor may outdo it in a few months.  A new, more complete fulfillment of ego-satisfaction that is “proven” through functional performance is both sustainable and immensely powerful.

  This concept of driving new and higher expectations is the real key to successful innovation, whether it includes product and technology creation or just new processes and methods to approach the market.   Apple has finally broken its self-imposed barrier to becoming an Alpha by allowing itself to meet minimum functional performance (it can now run Microsoft programs more easily and it has opened up its platform to allow more programming among software creators). But what gave it the potential to become the Alpha has always been the ego-satisfaction factors that made it worthy of becoming a cult brand.

  Apples’ newest innovations with Macbooks, iPods, and iPhones have not been technology driven as much as they have been ego-satisfaction driven.  There are both self-satisfaction elements (from performance, to design, to tactile aesthetics) and personal significance factors (who would believe that someone would squeal with delight to see a Macbook Air, as I witnessed occur in an airport or that you might see people huddled around someone who just got an iPhone?).

  The tools to finding these possible drivers of decisions

  Finding such possible drivers takes both quantitative and qualitative research.  Neither alone can provide enough insight to reduce risk and all but guarantee success.

  When we do this kind of assessment, we use a combination of both quantitative and qualitative tools in our Key Drivers and Growth Opportunities Assessment.  The quantitative assessment uses a questionnaire based upon what we learned in the Alpha Project to help us uncover unstated unmet needs and unstated desired drivers of decisions at the core level.  This assessment shows both what prospective customers wish they could be offered and how they wish it were offered to them.   This gives us insights at a predictive level, so we have already segmented the marketplace and determined the potential appeal of such new drivers, if we could address them well.

  We then use the qualitative phase as a testing platform to create, test, and modify potential innovations and implementation.  Through two stages of creation and testing (using real-time conjoint analysis in a qualitative setting coupled with live recreation of concepts), we not only discover what the solutions should look like, but we can also carry those solutions to the point that they can be implemented quickly and profitably… typically without large investment in R&D and test marketing.

  The answer is in the pyramid

  Understanding drivers of decisions is only as valuable as which drivers you are recognizing.  Current drivers only allow you to see how to be part of the pack, following the leader.  Possible future drivers are the secret path to future dominance and sustainable success.

  Use the Alpha pyramid, and you can innovate more successfully by driving new and higher customer expectations, which will then become the current drivers of decisions that others desire to copy.  That will make you the leader and force everyone else into a following mode.  Ignore the Alpha pyramid, and you will only uncover the current drivers of decisions and become one more follower.

  To understand more about how methodologies like our Key Drivers and Growth Opportunities Assessment can help you find the real secrets to growth, give us a call.  We would be happy to show you how easy it is to see the future.

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