En Garde. I’m challenging your business model!
For many of us the buying and selling of products and services are a regular part of our working life. It doesn’t matter which side of the table you sit on, all the sales decisions made should ultimately add value to both the buyers and seller’s business.
Throughout my career I have always adopted an approach of selling my products and services as a solution and value proposition to my customers business. But for the past few years I have started to challenge a few of our customers’ business models.
Let me reassure you that I don’t come out of the corner swinging a sword around or with an arrogant attitude. Rather a calm business confidence, gained through the knowledge of customers industry and the benefits our products bring.
Therein lies the problem though. How do you go about challenging a customer’s business model when you know there is an effective, and more importantly, a proven way of doing things better?
Good open and effective questions are always a good foundation for your challenge. Making sure that you understand the customers business. But the vital ingredient thereafter is the ‘product’.
At Tough Tech our products are new and innovative. Many of our technologies have not been available to the customer until now. For me, after the challenge there is a deep satisfaction watching and listening to our customers understand where our technology fits into their business model and indeed how that business model has evolved.
A good example has to be one of our European partners who manage Earthmover tyres on a rental, (cost per hour) scheme to their customers. Through challenging their existing business model and adopting our technology, the company has grown in just 4 years from managing tyre assets of £100k to managing £19m worth of tyres. That whole business model evolved on the back of product innovation and providing the customer something the market had not been able to do before.
ATLAS technology allowed the customer to remotely monitor tyres and machine health 24/7. Working pro-actively rather than re actively over a large geographical territory. All this and even when the machine is switched off.
As large commercial fleets are dominated by CPK, (cost per Kilometre) models. There is now an easy way to manage the fleet assets before, during and after a vehicle journey. Even when you are asleep, the technology is still working! If you are up for a ‘challenge’, we would be delighted to hear from you.
