Will it make your business go faster? (Benchmarking for success)

For their 2000 Americas Cup campaign, Team New Zealand had limited resources compared to many of their well-financed international competitors.

As a result they had to make sure they utilised every dollar and every resource as efficiently as possible.

To ensure this, they created the benchmark “Will it make the boat go faster?”

Once they established this benchmark all strategic decisions and expenditure were simply evaluated against this one criteria.

Opportunities that did not pass this benchmark were cast aside. 

Those to which the answer was ‘yes’, were pursued with vigour, intensity and focus.

This clear and simple benchmark of ‘Will it make the boat go faster?’ensured the whole of Team New Zealand stayed singularly focused in their endeavours, regardless of whether their role in the organisation was to manage, design, build or sail the boat.

It also ultimately helped ensure Team New Zealand were successful in achieving their goal of winning the America’s Cup; even against much larger and better financed teams.

Nappies Direct – A case study

As a retailer it is always tempting to drive additional volume by competing on price.

However competing on price is generally a race to the bottom – the company with the biggest, deepest pockets ultimately prevails.  

Plus, to drive volume, price focused retailers have focused their energy and resources at targeting ‘Price driven’ customers. And at the end of the day, price driven customers are seldom loyal as their focus is on obtaining the cheapest deal available.

Therefore, at Nappies Direct we took the opposite approach and focused our energies on:

Ø ‘Out-servicing’ the opposition (our main competitors being Countdown, New World, Pak ‘N Save and The Warehouse) 

Ø Targeting ‘Loyal’ customers.

Loyal customers care less about price and more about quality and service. 

Ultimately they are the customers that will drive the on-going, long-term success of your business.

They are the ones that come back and spend money with your business week after week, month after month, year after year.

They are also your greatest advocates, recommending your business to their friends, families, online communities, etc.

To ensure we stayed focused on our goal we established a benchmark for Nappies Direct: 

• “Will it create more loyal customers?”

Once we had this benchmark it was very easy for us to set strategic direction, embed it into the DNA of our business and test all decisions against this singular goal, thus ensuring the future path and success of our business over the long-term.

So what is your company’s benchmark?

·      3 Questions for helping you define your Company’s Benchmark

1.    What is your company’s reason for being?

2.    Who are your target marketand what problem / pain point are you solving for them?

3.    What does success look like?

At Nappies Direct, our answers would be

1.    What is your company’s reason for being?

Ø Home delivery of the baby products you know and trust

2.    Who are your target market and what problem / pain point are you solving for them?

• First time mums. They are stuck at home with a new baby. 

• It is very hard for them to leave the home and when they do, they would rather visit friends and family than go to a supermarket. 

• Our home delivery service enabled new mums to do this.

3.    What does success look like?

• Doubling the number of long term customers every year. 

So to make your company go faster, contact Kevin at Motherbase e: kevin@motherbase.net , p: +6421 214 9717