Innovation Comes in Lots of Flavors!
The buzz words, as of late, are Strategic Innovation. Most contexts refer to big business, but how does that apply to mine and your Network Marketing business? I sat back and thought about this, several times, because, I was told that this is an important force in building my business, possibly exponentially.
What I learned, and realized, was that innovation can happen in many areas and many ways. Strategic innovation means innovating the things the customers care about. Strategic Innovation is taking a look at how you do what you do. And, if how you do what you do for your customers can be made more efficient, more productive, and add more value and benefit to the service the customer receives, then this is definitely Strategic Innovation.
Innovative ideas for Network Marketing / MLM:
Create a trade show where I bring video’s, samples (if possible), testimonials, of what people want to know about your service and has the $ to buy.
Get in front of a trend and do things no one else is currently doing. Would you be willing to go or to send 3 of your people/team to the cutting edge, trend setting places to find out what your customers really want?
NOKIA did this and experienced a 78% increase because they found out their customers wanted pink. Connect into people’s passions.
In the article, Innovation Lessons From Small Business by Andrew Waldeck and Renee Hopkins Callahan, they talk about about Strategic Innovation. Their first statement: “Many small-business owners are highly innovative but don’t realize it.” Innovation comes from knowing your customer REALLY well and implementing new processes, procedures, marketing techniques to reach and satisfy your customer. It could be a change in your follow- system, in your methods of exposing your product to your customer, in your measuring your marketing activity, etc. This is innovation. It may not be introducing a new product but it is making you better so that you can better serve your customer and their needs.
“Understanding your customers is required for successful innovation. Small-business owners, with their intimate knowledge of their customers, actually are incredibly well-positioned to innovate.” Andrew Waldeck and Renee Hopkins
One way to always be reviewing your Strategic Innovation is to make it a part of your Business Plan. I bet you are saying, “but I don’t have a business plan!” We will talk about that in another post. Simply put a Business Plan can be as basic as a financial projection of what you want your business to do for the year and then the actions of how you will achieve this and keep a consistent measurement on your progress. And, when you do this, this is considered a Strategic Innovation for your business. You have now taken a step to innovate the operations and knowledge of your business. This will absolutely impact how you show up for your clients.
“Above all, businesses of all sizes need to remember that innovation is not limited to products, services, technology or creative thinking. Creating a new product isn’t always the goal–rather, focus on understanding why the customer can’t adequately solve important problems and develop an innovative business model that does the job in a new, novel fashion.” Andrew Waldeck and Renee Hopkins
What are some actions, disciplines, techniques that you have added to how you do business in 2013? Share any small change you have made in your business to improve your customer service.
Much Success!!!
Have an outstanding day!