I’ve recently answered a question on what brings a product to life.

I disagreed with some people who thought that the answer was when the “money owing for the product clears in the bank account and exceeds the
liabilities that were created in the process of production”

I thought these answers were too simplistic and actually don’t describe “coming to life”. It could mean that a £1 profit meant the product had come to life and for me that’s not a good description. What I think describes a product coming to life is when it starts to “excite” the producers and purchasers. It’s only through an emotional state can a product actually have an “exciting life”.

Let me give you some examples.

a) In her recent Royal engagements The Duchess of Cambridge has worn coats from last years fashions and the shops have been inundated by people wanting to buy the same coats and shoes and have gone into new production to fulfil demand.

b) Apple creates a loyalty for its products and makes visiting the store exciting, energetic

c) Abercrombie and Fitch have an opposite product to the rest of the high street. The stores are dark, you can’t see the product clearly, it’s unbelievably expensive (in UK if not in USA) and yet kids crowd in, desperate to have a photo taken with half naked models where their muscles are highlighted by clever downward lighting and spray tanning to accentuate the bumps. The products are bought because it’s “Cool fashion”. It’s an exciting product.

The other thing about the examples above is that the product isn’t just what’s bought!
It’s the experience, the emotion of ownership and belonging to a group of other owners.

Products that don’t build this into the product mix may have a “Birth” but they’re likely to have a short life 

My electricity and telephone/broadband contacts are up for renewal and in the run-up to the festive season I was receiving three or four phone calls a day from salespeople who expected to be able to “move my account” after a brief and cursory quote promising to save me money.

However, I’m a buyer who takes the attitude that if it’s going to cost less then what am I going to have to “give up”. The salesperson phoning me often seemed aghast when I asked for more details such as proof of their after-sales service claims, websites so that I could check their boasts and a confused silence on the other end of the line when asked to email me details of the contract so that I could study them at my leisure.

I’m much more used to dealing with sophisticated sales-teams selling Banking, Financial Services and large ticket products and I’ve been thinking how these salesteams are changing. The coming year is going to be hard and will result in agreement times between sales proposal and acceptance or rejection being extended by twenty percent or more. This could mean that some sales may take many more months to complete than before.

Already I’ve observed Sales Directors being instructed by their Boards to reduce “Toxic costs” even more vigorously than before. These “Toxic costs”  include travel (car costs), telephone charges, training budgets, sales offices and even admin back-up. I know of three well known companies who are gearing up their HR Departments to advise them on processes for removing future “non-fertile salespeople”. (A description that’s likley to casue confusion at some futue occasion, I think!)

It’s wrong to suggest that all people believe that the less a product costs the more attractive it is. People want to buy reliability, after care service, consistency and results as promised as part of their purchase.

If a company is really planning to grow sales it’s hard to understand why it needs to reduce product quality.