Earlier this week, I had a conversation with a fellow consultant about creating a culture of creativity and innovation and how to get customers aboard. It reminded me of an event many years ago: about ten years ago, I participated in a holiday auction. One of the auction items was a large collection of tools. The lot contained so many tools that it was hard to get a sense of what was useful and what was just part of the lot. So it was difficult to assess the overall value of the lot. The auction on the item had a slow start and it fetched a remarkably low price.

 

The main idea of the auction was to raise money for charity, and everyone in the room (including the successful bidder) felt that the final price didn’t reflect the real value. At first no one knew what to do about it, until someone suggested breaking the whole lot into four smaller lots and auctioning them off separately.

 

We broke up the lot into smaller lots and it was much easier to figure out what was valuable to me and what I wasn’t interested in. The smaller lots were re-auctioned, and to my complete surprise, each of the smaller lots achieved a higher price than the total before. At that moment I realized that we all shared the problem that we couldn’t identify what had value and what didn’t – yet we assigned a higher value to the different lots.

 

In the conversation with my colleague – which triggered this recollection – he told me about a software solution provider that tried to deliver unprecedented innovation to their customers. They offered a highly sophisticated solution that aimed at solving pretty much all the problems the customers had in this segment. The result of a focus group about the service: low perception of value and poor prediction of sales success. The company didn’t give up or even try to improve the offering. Quite the opposite: they stripped the solution down to the three identified main benefits and focused the product and the marketing just on these. The result: a breakthrough success at a price point they didn’t dare to hope for.

 

Take the next Step

 

Pay attention to situations in which you don’t have the impact you want, don’t get your message across or don’t achieve the results you hope for. Instead of dispersing your efforts into everything, focus on key parts of what you’re trying to do. Consider limiting the focus to just one main point, and notice how your impact increases.