Michael J. Silverstein (born 1955) is an American business consultant and author.
The truth is that business is simple: create great products, merchandise them at the point of sale, continuously innovate and surprise, reward and achieve a position of loyalty with your front line, and seek new truth from the market. Deliver the goods at a competitive cost. Price to earn a decent but not competitively inviting return. Not much else matters.
The most effective CEOs have a primary source for tracking their markets. They meet with their teams frequently enough to keep innovation flowing, to reduce and focus costs, to be energized. They create a tight agenda and they set high goals.
I like to take CEOs into consumers' homes to see the "real world. " CEOs have privileged lives with big incomes, lots of help, access to just about anything they wish. The average consumer lives on $53,000 a year and has daily tradeoffs and compromises that must be made. I took a CEO into a trailer park so he could observe first-hand - and understand - how consumers use his product.
I believe in classic ideas. They are timeless. They are forever. There are many fads in management.
Epidemics of "bad" voice can kill your reputation overnight.
All great companies have spirit and culture. Mean spirited returns mean spirit.
Woo your biggest fans. This rule says concentrate your efforts at understanding on the 2 percent of consumers that personally drive 20 percent of sales and invite their friends and colleagues to enjoy you.
My best clients tell stories that inspire. They tell stories about situations that you can identify with.
A curious mind does not say to consumers "What do you want?" A curious mind understands context, understands behavior, understands spending and spending patterns - the accumulation of a day's purchases, or spending over a week or a year. A curious mind asks the questions that open up the consumer to talk about her latent dissatisfactions, hopes, wishes, and dreams.
Failure to make the tough but necessary choices means slow painful death.
The starting point is to create a qualitative understanding of market drivers. You need to get into the head of the consumer and be able to tell her story. It is both art and science. The purpose of the market map is to define dissatisfactions, hopes, dreams and fears. Winning solutions respond to the distinct and specific needs of a group of consumers.
People underestimate the power of the Internet. For some consumers, it is the source of all information. Younger adults are on their phones more than they watch television. They don't read newspapers. It is their real world. It is not a set of virtual lenses.
The choices we make define our future.
Time is a big enemy. Companies have a tendency to drift and to do what was successful yesterday. CEOs need to set a high goal, enforce a time-based output scheme and stay connected all the way down in their organization. They have to do this sincerely every day, everywhere.
You need to have sufficient resources against your priorities. Your eyes have to be open every day.
Always welcome your customer's scorn. This rule says read the complaint letters. Categorize them. Decide how you are going to wipe them out.
You make money when you get visitors to go through the entrance at capacity.
Consumers cannot think in abstractions. They cannot envision a new concept. They cannot predict their behavior. They can only compare against their current frame of reference. So you need to make the big leap for them. You need to provide them with a reason to buy, a reason to brag to their friends. Expect new-to-the-world ideas to fall on deaf ears. Consumers will, however, change their tune when they can see, touch, and explore.
Define a winning proposition that is consumer right and delivers margin accretion.
Companies that get in trouble have a failure to see two realities: market trends and competitor attacks.