Almost every C-Suite, VP of Marketing, CMO, Exec. Sales Manager, and anyone else involved in revenue generation gets lost in, “What do we need to do to increase sales?”  The real question is, “What do the people we really wish we could convince to buy from us need to see, hear, or experience to turn them into OUR loyal customers?”

The entire Alpha Model is based upon fifteen years of research and testing that proved that the answer to making a company a self-sustainably success company is hidden in that change of perspective.  Once you change your model for innovation from what can we do to what do they REALLY want that they are not getting, your innovation strategy changes.  And success starts to follow you.

All the stuff about high-level needs vs. low-level needs and aspirations vs. functional performance are details that seem to only make the basic confusion worse for those lost in “what do we do?” mode.  The most basic issue is how we view innovation and growth creation (surpassingly to some people, these are not linked).

There are some basic killers of self-sustaining growth and innovation that I see in many, many organizations.

“Sales on demand” killers

The problem starts with a corporate demand that you be able to generate sales growth whenever management feels that things are slowing down.  This “Growth on Demand” idea is death to real innovation (and even sales effectiveness).  It assumes that the company or the sales team has been taking a “vacation,” while sales have started to slip away.  Occasionally, that may be true, but it is more often the case that the strategic innovation piece has been put on the back burner, while “get ‘er done” sales pressure has been moved to highest priority.

If a company believes it should be able to create sales on demand, it can not be successful at strategic innovation that will drive continuously improving results.

“What we make” killers

The other big problem I see all too often is that an innovation team designs what it can make or what it thinks is valuable to customers.  This process seldom, if ever, starts with understanding what customers really want or see as deep-seated needs that they want to solve or fulfill.  Such research is all too often problematic, because what is revealed is NOT new products or improvements to existing ones… rather what is revealed is a set of personal, satisfaction and significance fulfillment needs that don’t obviously translate into products or functional improvements.

Guess what?  That’s exactly what you want to learn. Those are the keys to learning how to take almost any product that meets minimum functional performance expectations and turn it into a winner.  The truth is that people don’t buy things.  They buy functional performance (at the lowest level of decision making) and satisfaction and significance fulfillment (at the highest levels of decision making).

So the secret is…

Stop focusing upon what you do or can do. Focus upon what people really want – in terms of satisfaction and significance – and allow that to guide whatever you do, and you will be far more successful.

Wes Ball has helped more than 100 companies create significant growth, even in cases where no growth had been occurring for more than a decade.  He is also author of The Alpha Factor, the book that defines the revenue-generation model that created that growth.  You can find Wes at answers@ballgroup.com.

Non-Alpha thinking says…  “Size equals domination.”  Sadly, this non-Alpha thinking has limited growth more than it has increased it.  Here’s why…

Remember the big bully in grade school you dreaded seeing walking toward you?  If he was like the ones I recall, he turned out to be a “paper tiger.”  As soon as anyone with real confidence (even someone who was smaller than he) stood up to him, he either backed down or was soundly beaten in the process.

Large companies are often a lot like that bully.  Larger companies typically only have a small number of “competitive advantages” that they employ to drive growth and intimidate competitors.  Smaller companies are much more agile.  A smaller company has far more flexibility in how it can compete and, therefore, can beat a large company in any given niche of the overall market.

Beating larger companies is one of my favorite things to do.

I love helping a regional company whip a large national competitor using a fraction of the marketing budget the big guy employs.  Or taking a small local business and turning it into the competitor that everyone else fears.  It’s really not that hard… IF you know the secrets to making it work.

The small secret to big success

The secret to creating that kind of leverage for a smaller company is all in the Alpha model.  Larger companies typically compete on a “functional” level.  They create new versions of their products that do more.  Ho-hum.  They find ways to cut costs and charge less for the same thing.  Boooring.  And they make sure they have wider distribution.  Yawn.

What people really want… even in tough economic times… is a better customer experience and more assurance that they are getting more for their money.  (And, frankly, even in really tough times, people will spend more to get that better customer experience.)  Sadly, what people want is not what larger companies think they have to provide in order to dominate.

Functional performance is the playground of the “Survivor” or “Scavenger.”  Satisfaction and Significance are the playgrounds of the Alpha.  Even though any company of any size can use this secret to their advantage, corporate blindness and arrogance gets in the way of larger companies more easily than it does small companies.

That’s why smaller companies can become an Alpha more easily than can large companies.  But, because most business owners (and even employees) buy into the lie that “large” equals “better,” they are too intimidated to take the steps to become the Alpha influencer and gain the profits available.

The things to keep in mind

There are a few critical things that every healthy person wants.  If you focus upon providing whatever you provide in a way that enhances these, you are on the way to beating most, if not all of your competitors.  The funny thing is that, if you pursue these things in your revenue-generation efforts, your competitors will not even understand what you are doing, so they won’t be able to compete.

Here are the key things to remember that every healthy person wants:

• to feel cared for
• to be perceived as being smart (by himself and others)
• to be admired
• to be influential
• to feel mostly in control of his environment
• to be respected

Some questions to ask yourself

1.  What has Apple (one of the few large Alphas left, although it is now dying because it has lost this secret) done to make itself able to get people to pay more for their product than almost any competitor’s product?  Can you see how “customer experience” and the list defined above have played a role in that?

2.  Are you copying the big guys, or are you making them copy you because you have become so successful in creating a better customer experience?

3.  Where in your marketing, sales, and after-the-sale follow up are you addressing the list above?

Wes Ball is President and founder of The Ball Group and the Alpha Business Academy.  He is also author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success.  Wes personally works with a few select companies each year who he thinks can become Alphas… no matter what size they are to start with. He can be reached at answers@ballgroup.com.

Because so many business owners continue to trip over this problem, this year I am launching a Business Growth and Entrepreneurs Summit that will travel to select cities around the country.  Its intent is simple:  help current business owners (and aspiring ones) clearly understand the secrets to actually creating self-sustaining, repeatable growth.  These are the secrets that were discovered through The Alpha Factor research and have been proven over and over again in turning around or growing more than 100 businesses throughout the U.S.

The first stop is June 10 in Lancaster, PA. You can learn more about it at www.thealphafactor.com/summit/lancaster.

The primary focus of this day-long event will be 1) how you can create value that overcomes a need to discount, 2) how you can use that knowledge to create revenue-side strategies and marketing communications that will drive lead generation that dwarfs your previous efforts (and crushes your competition), and 3) how you can make sure you have established your business on the right foundations (financially, culturally, and conceptually).

If you are like most people, you are probably wondering, “Why are you holding this in a county with the second largest population of the Amish?”  If that’s your reaction, then you have no idea what is happening in this surprising center of innovation and creativity.

Lancaster has been…

• named the best place to start and run a business multiple times over the past three decades.
• home to five Fortune 500 companies and dozens of other top-level corporations innovating consumer, business, and defense products and services.
• home to (or source of) a surprising set of start-up technology companies.
• one of the top creative centers in the world of mid-sized advertising agencies during the late 1990s with more ad agencies per capita than any other market I could find – many of these were turning out award-winning work for many large national clients, as well as mid-sized regional innovative companies.
• a hotbed of underground music with world-class music studios (before the days of home-based computer studios) hidden in barns, old churches, and other mundane-looking buildings.

It is also the home of The Alpha Factor.

Lancaster is one of those enviable places that has proven you don’t have to be in a big market to do big business competing with the “big boys.”  You would be stunned to see who is doing what in this market that is never even seen locally.

If you are on the path to stardom and want to make sure you are not going to slip off that path, OR if you are concerned with creating new growth for your business, we look forward to seeing you at the Business Growth and Entrepreneurs Summit.

The answer is not in following the path your competitors have taken; it is in finding your own path using the universally-proven principles of The Alpha Factor model.  You will also have a chance to rub shoulders with an amazing array of persons who are creating surprising growth right where they are.

We look forward to seeing you there on June 10, 2013 in innovative, growing, surprising Lancaster, PA.

Although it is only a one-day event, attendees will have three tracks to choose from:  one for existing businesses to learn the secrets to creating sales and profit growth in ANY economy from already tested success creators; one for entrepreneurs in the early stages of their business to understand the essentials of marketing their business in all media; and one for financing, HR, and other administrative issues that have changed significantly over the past four years.

You will even have a chance to get a complete do-it-yourself Alpha Growth binder and manual that will lead you through getting started on the path to becoming an Alpha company in your market.

• The date:  June 10, 2013.
• The place:  The Eden Resort, Lancaster, PA
• The web page:  thealphafactor.com/summit/lancaster

Be warned:  we only have 200 seats available, so don’t wait to register.

Registration opens today online.  If you plan to bring multiple persons from your team so you can cover more than one track, make sure you don’t miss out.  Register right now.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Wes Ball, President, The Ball Group

Every aspiring entrepreneur thrives on the idea of becoming the next Bill Gates, starting a business out of a garage and eventually becoming one of the most powerful and wealthy persons in the world. But, what’s wrong with this picture?

Firstly, according to a Reuters story on May 2, 2012, we hit a low in business startups as a percentage of existing businesses in 2010 (our most recent U.S. Census data). We were down to a 7.8% startup rate compared to the record high of 13.8% in 1987, the height of the Reagan years. We are below the startup rates in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Eastern Europe, Mexico, and a whole lot more non-third world countries. Worse than that is the observation by The Atlantic’s associate editor, Jordan Weissmann in an October 2012 article that most of our startups seem to be in desperation i.e., can’t get a job so the only thing left is to start something.

Most entrepreneurs are reluctant ones, at best. But that’s only the beginning of the problem, as far as I’m concerned.

Compounding that is the nasty truth about business failure rates. For the approximate 400,000 new business startups each year in the U.S., they have a failure rate of…

• In year 1:                  85%
• In year 2:                  70%
• In year 3:                  62%
• In year 4:                  55%

The only way to sustainable health is on the revenue side (or “sales” for non-financial persons). Sell more at higher profits, and it makes up for a lot of cost-side mistakes. Get someone to address the cost side as well, and you are in even better shape.

To anyone who runs a business, this is obvious… except in the largest companies who don’t believe they have the power to influence sales that much (even though that belief is not true). But managers outside of the owner’s corner office seldom have that same understanding.

The biggest problem is two-fold: 1) most non-C-suite managers have never seen marketing or sales actually produce sustainable growth, except during short windows of opportunity, and 2) they also don’t believe they can predictably manage revenue-generation. The truth is that they can generate self-sustaining success predictably, if they learn a few tricks.

Here are three of those tricks:

1. Stop worrying about price and start justifying higher prices. Higher prices are driven by value-creation. Value-creation means allowing customer expectations to rise to a new level that makes your product or service worth more. Often you can do that without creating significantly more costs, IF you follow the Alpha model for innovating: That is, once you have met minimum performance expectations, focus upon how people feel about themselves when they buy or use your product and how they think other people feel about them. Sounds all too simple, and, in fact, it is very simple. But it is the simple secret to overcoming all competitors and getting as much as double the price you were getting.
2. Stop competing. If you are competing against other products or services, you are only giving those competitors power over you and influence in the minds of your potential customers. Ignore competitors and raise customer expectations so no one else is even considered.
3. Don’t pressure salespeople; give them something to sell that their customers really want. Most companies think they can intimidate or “incentivize” better sales performance. It seldom works for more than a couple of months, and then it becomes self-defeating. If you follow the Alpha model and encourage your marketing and sales team with how much they are going to be helping customers fulfill their deep emotional needs by selling them your product or service, guess how much more motivated those sales and marketing persons will be. They will also be much more successful, because they are giving customers what they really want.

What’s the secret to your company reducing discounting in this tough economy? How can you get your bottom line off the floor and back into the prosperity zone? The Alpha model really works because it goes directly to the hidden core motivations of every customer.

How are you and your company overcoming an economy that seems to be lost in self-destructiveness?

Wes Ball is president and founder of The Ball Group, a strategic innovation and business growth organization. He is also author of The Alpha Factor a revolutionary new look at what really creates self-sustaining success and market domination. Wes speaks nationally on the subject of business turn-around and growth in any economy. You can reach Wes at w.ball@ballgroup.com.

Sorry. I know that’s hard news. But it is like saying a football team can be successful without having 11 players at risk of getting hurt. Take away the risk, and what happens? Not much.

So, is it any wonder that we have a country full of businesses who claim to be entrepreneurial innovators yet can’t come up with anything other than a copy or “improvement” of someone else’s ideas?

The whole purpose of the Alpha Factor research initially was to figure out how a few companies have been able to make themselves the Alpha that competitors follow, even after they become large corporations with lots of employees. The fact is that any one of the Alphas I have spotted could be overcome by any truly entrepreneurial innovator. Sadly, their competitors just can’t find the entrepreneurial spirit within them to become more than a scavenging follower.

Just look at the pathetic list of followers chasing behind Apple (the last real Alpha on my list). Do you seriously think any one of them is truly innovating? Give me a break. Who really takes REM seriously? Or Dell? Come on.

American businesses are full of people who talk about being entrepreneurial. But few actually are.

Here are three steps to help you start becoming the entrepreneurial business you dream of being:

Step 1: Stop hiring “employees” That’s right. I don’t mean doing it all yourself, although that might be a good start. I mean start hiring persons who are at risk, not just getting paid to show up. I don’t mean just giving someone an incentive to come up with new ideas. I mean, make them responsible for making something big happen, AND give them the incentive of big rewards for success. Make them actual or virtual partners in the enterprise. Don’t make them employees who get a salary.

I know, few people really have the stuff to do that. So, find them, and stop finding all the ones who don’t have what it takes. You’ll still have to hire the worker bees to help handle the prosperity that comes from what these entrepreneurs create. But don’t start with the worker bees. Start with the risk-taking creators.

Step 2: Stop accepting “talk” By the end of high school, almost everyone has been taught how to talk the talk. Few have a clue how to really make anything happen, even after grad school. Don’t be fooled. There’s only one thing that makes a creative entrepreneur: the ability to make things happen.

Start screening for people who have actually made things happen. Then make them prove it. Make the base expectation that things start happening. No excuses. No needing help. Make them come up with the ways to make things happen AND actually accomplish something. Let them find their own help. Let them build their own support teams.

And don’t let age become a factor. Neither youth nor grey hair offer any guarantees. Look strictly for those who have the fire and the courage to jump in there and see it through to a positive end. There are lots of 20- and 30 somethings and lots of 50- and 60-somethings with the drive and entrepreneurial fire to make things happen. Find them and use them.

Step 3: Stop accepting anything less than “leadership”. An entrepreneur is a leader. He doesn’t just try to copy someone else’s ideas. And a leading company was (at least at one time) entrepreneurial.

There are three parts to this:

1. you can’t create “leaders” you can only give born leaders a chance to take on leadership roles
2. a company without natural leaders in leadership roles cannot become a leading company
3. a company that does not demand leadership (rather than “follower-ship”) cannot long succeed in today’s changing world

Don’t allow your business to stay a follower. Make 2013 the year you make the change to leadership. Find the entrepreneurs who can handle risk with big rewards. Screen them for their past success in actually making things happen, and then hold them to that standard. And start demanding leadership for your company.

Nothing less can survive the next six years. Nothing less can give you what you started this business to achieve.

Wes Ball is president and founder of The Ball Group, a strategic innovation and new market development company. He is also author of The Alpha Factor, a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. You can reach him at w.ball@ballgroup.com. Or on the web at ballgroup.com.

Wait a minute? Aren’t customer satisfaction surveys supposed to improve performance? Truth is… I have not seen that to be the result.

Here’s what I see: customer satisfaction surveys seldom uncover the real causes of dissatisfaction, so they can’t possibly improve anything. In fact, in most larger banks, customer satisfaction survey results have a direct effect upon employee incomes, so how probing do you think they will be? If your income is going to be negatively affected by anything that hints at a “problem,” what do you think the results are going to show?

Worse, because these studies have direct impact upon income, they can’t be changed. The typical customer satisfaction survey doesn’t even ask the right questions. It doesn’t measure the right factors (based upon regression analysis done upon many, many studies). So, how can you make improvements?

Banking has always been a change-resistant industry, but let’s face it: this is nuts. If satisfaction was even as low as 80%, it would be OK. But it’s not even close to that. Less than half of all bank customers like their bank.

The only thing that has continued to save banks from themselves is the emotional and economic stress in making a change. I have often wondered how many customers a bank would lose even if they slapped every customer who walked in the door! People will put up with an incredible amount of abuse from a bank just because they really don’t want to change banks. But, once “convenience” factors change, look out those customers will move out faster than an ATM can charge you a $3.50 service fee.

The answer?

Do some real research to find out what the real driving factors are… like how customers feel about themselves using your bank, how they think others feel about them working with you, and what are the causes of those specific feelings. (If you don’t already understand why those are so critical, read The Alpha Factor (Westlyn Publishing 2008.) With those answers, you will be able to uncover exactly how you can turn your customers into champions for you.

Wes Ball is author of The Alpha Factor, a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. He is also president of The Ball Group, a strategic market research company that specializes in innovation and new market development. He has worked with financial institutions ranging in size from the U.S. Department of the Treasury to regional community banks. You can reach Wes at w.ball@ballgroup.com.

A discounted launch is more like cutting off your feet before a marathon to make yourself more competitive.

I was at a food show last week meeting with a lot of small and mid-sized businesses introducing new products to retailers and distributors.� As always, I was struck by the number of new products being created and the investment these companies had made in development, packaging, marketing support, and corporate infrastructure to make bringing this product to market even possible.� Then, all to often, they had been convinced by either retailers or distributors that they need to discount or otherwise lower their price on their new product in order to launch it successfully.

They just undermined the ability of that product to ever generate the profit it was designed to generate.� The problem is that once a price is set (whether discounted “temporarily” or just priced too low), it is extremely expensive to get that price up to where it should be.

One example was so extreme that I recommended starting over with a new brand.� This company had created a very high value product that they had been convinced by a distributor should be priced at retail at 1/3 of what competitive products were priced.� What should have become a product that could fund innovation for a strong future is now destined to simply be a tool for some retailers to make a quick sale that will have little life, because customers will not believe it could possibly be as good as competitive products that are priced 3-4 times higher.� It would be impossible to ever generate enough volume to make up for that lost revenue.

This discounting strategy comes from big manufacturers.� They use it regularly, because they have been convinced it is a predictable model.� But here is the sad truth:� their success rate using this model is less than 10%.� Even after investing millions of dollars in the development and marketing of that product, their pricing model doesn’t work.

If it doesn’t work for them, why would small and mid-sized manufacturers think they could be more successful with it?

Here’s the truth: customers respect real pricing; they dislike discounting.� I have referred several times to a series of couponing studies my company conducted over several years.� These studies regularly revealed that only about 10% of the population even says they “only buy on sale.”� Most purchasers of discounted items said they bought “sale” items they would have purchased anyway at regular price.

Even for new products they had never seen before, most would have tried the product at full price rather than needing a discount to drive the trial purchase.� Either the product was attractive to them or it wasn’t.� Either the promised experience or benefit is a value at regular price or it never will be.� For products that were so unusual that trial was needed, we discovered that it was far better to sample the product for free than to give a discount, because the discounted price became the benchmark for future purchases.

Here’s the secret to pricing success:� do the research ahead to discover the real “regular” value of your product.� Before setting the price, test ways you might further increase the value of your product (especially ways you can do that without investing more in the product itself) .� And then do everything you can to hold your price.� The profit dollar you give up today will never been made up by promises of future volume, because people really want to find “value,” not a “deal.”

Wes Ball is the author of The Alpha Factor � a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success.� He is also president and founder of The Ball Group, a strategic innovation and new market development company that doesn’t just point companies in the right direction; they also help those companies actually address the opportunities identified.� You can reach Wes at w.ball@ballgroup.com.

What should be the question?� How are they making buying decisions and what do they aspire to buy?� Know how they are deciding, and you can know how to guide them to better decisions.

Here’s something surprising:� most people make decisions about really important things for the wrong reasons.� For instance, bankers have know for decades that “convenience” is the #1 reason someone chooses a bank.� Also, hospitals are chosen because the parking is easier, their doctor likes it, or that’s where the ambulance took me.� Financial advisors are chosen because they are likable.� These are three of the most important decisions a person can make, yet the decisions are made on almost irrelevant factors.

Worse, marketing research seldom digs any deeper to understand why customers are using “stupid” logic to make buying decisions.� That’s why the most common conclusion of buying decision research is that “price” is a key factor.� That’s nonsense.

Price (like convenience, or likability, someone I trust said so) is evidence of NOT having a real deciding factor rather than being a deciding factor.� I have personally done many studies of persons who say they buy “on sale” items, and I continuously get the same results:� only about 10% of the population claims to buy only “sale” or the lowest-priced items (meaning “price” is the determining factor).� And, of those, at least 80% admit to regularly buying premium high-priced products that feed their sense of self-fulfillment.

In other words, almost all of the people who claim to buy on price alone are liars.� (Frankly, I have never met a person yet who won’t finally admit to buying things that are not the lowest priced.� They will always find something that they believe is worth paying more to get.)

As I define in my book, The Alpha Factor (2008, Westlyn Publishing), the secret to more effective innovation, more successful marketing, and more sustainable business growth is in understanding personal aspirations of persons buying or needing products or services in your category.� It doesn’t really matter as much what they say about their self-perception or what they say they buy as it matters what they secretly aspire to be or to be perceived as being.

How people self-describe their buying habits is often not proven out in real buying decisions.� There is a veil between what most people think about what they do and why they do it and reality.� The reason is that their aspirations are either unreachable in their own minds (and therefore should not be stated as part of their decision process) or it is embarrassing.� For instance, few people want anyone to know how much they covet respect or admiration from others, so they will avoid saying that openly.

So, stop focusing upon “what” they buy or do, and stop believing what they say about their buying decision process.� Start uncovering aspirations, and you will have much more ammunition for innovation, for marketing, and for creating self-sustaining success for your business.

Wes Ball is author of The Alpha Factor � a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success.� He is also president and founder of The Ball Group, a strategic innovation and new market development company that helps businesses create self-sustaining growth and success.� You can reach Wes at w.ball@ballgroup.com.