Since 2009, the truth present Shark Tank has been a constant crowd-pleaser. In 2022, media scores and analytics large Nielsen estimated Season 14’s common viewership at 4.2 million individuals per episode. The Shark Tank hook is easy: Determine a novel and often as-yet-unmet want within the market, create and produce a product that satisfies that want, after which hopefully money in on it for giant bucks. Whether or not that product is a Scrub Daddy, a smiley-face dish scrubber, Bombas, a philanthropic model of socks and underwear, or the Ionic Ear, a surgically implanted Bluetooth headset (the Sharks didn’t chew on that one), groundbreaking CEO Jack Truong sees this “determine demand and provide the necessity” technique as a really sound enterprise observe.
With a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and 11 revolutionary patents to his credit score, Jack Truong has a formidable historical past of researching untapped market niches and subsequently creating the requisite items and companies to meet them — all to the tune of main earnings. Whereas at 3M, he reimagined the faltering pale-yellow Put up-it notice into the rainbow-hued, multiuse megabrand it’s at this time and was additionally instrumental within the improvement of the corporate’s Scotch-Brite microfiber material, which has since grow to be synonymous with scratch-free cleansing worldwide.
“I used to be uncovered to varied divisions in my first two years at 3M, and I actually needed to be taught and perceive what the unmet wants have been in these industries, and provide you with innovations that ship revolutionary options for these specific sectors,” Truong informed Building Information.
Why Firms Should Pivot To Meet Evolving Shopper Wants
As occasions change, there are inevitably going to be items and companies that fall by the wayside. Nonetheless, this sort of attrition solely accounts for a small share of failed enterprise endeavors. Sadly, the company panorama is plagued by downed gamers who fell flat as the results of nothing a lot as missed alternative.
“As know-how advances and shopper demand evolves, corporations and merchandise rapidly will be left behind,” Truong cautioned. “Too many organizations are centered on growing, launching, and loading new applied sciences and options to current merchandise whereas ignoring the opportunity of new options that truly make life straightforward for shoppers.”
When Truong took the helm as president and CEO of Electrolux, the venerable equipment model was poised on simply such a slippery slope. On the time, the corporate’s administration had accepted declining gross sales figures as, if not inevitable, at the least extremely doubtless. However the place they noticed stagnant enlargement prospects, Jack Truong noticed promise.
“Again in 2011, after I joined, [Electrolux] was a few $4.2 billion enterprise,” he informed CEO Journal. “The corporate noticed North America as a mature market and didn’t anticipate any progress. Actually, after I took over, the corporate wasn’t rising and revenue was declining.”
Throughout his first assembly with the corporate’s world management, Truong made his case: “There’s no such factor as a mature market, there’s solely mature enterprise managers,” he asserted. “In fact they have been shocked … however North America is a really giant market and it must be rising.”
After sussing out the competitors’s strengths and weaknesses, Truong centered on market suggestions to discover a worthwhile answer. Realizing Electrolux couldn’t go toe-to-toe in technological whiz-bangery, Truong acknowledged its merchandise had their very own set of strengths — ease of use, sturdiness, and superior aesthetic design — making them objects that buyers weren’t solely hungry to personal, however keen to pay substantial cash to get. By repositioning the model to leverage these components, Truong saved Electrolux from attainable extinction, and in addition turned it right into a model to be reckoned with, rising from third place within the North American market to second, and seeing the corporate’s valuation double.
How Listening to Shopper Wants Unlocks the Doorways to Progress
Admittedly, there are typically unassailable forces at play — the introduction of synthetic intelligence, for instance — that result in the obsolescence of sure industries whose revenue fashions are depending on outmoded know-how. Nonetheless, as shopper preferences morph to fulfill the altering market, Jack Truong asserts savvy leaders should constantly tune in to buyer suggestions in the event that they hope to succeed.
Stakeholders have to establish not solely which issues their clients like and which they hate, but additionally pinpoint the products or companies for which there’s a urgent shopper want they’re both unable to search out or can’t fairly afford. “Creativity prices cash and innovation drives worth,” Truong defined. “Hear rigorously to what shoppers don’t say, and observe intently what they do. Solely then do your improvements have the potential to vary shopper conduct and create true worth and demand.”
Truong warns dashing a product to market with out rigorously doing all of your homework first can have disastrous outcomes. In case you’re searching for a first-rate instance of a extremely anticipated product that was neither budget-friendly nor happy shoppers’ precise want checklist, Jack Truong says you want look no additional than Google Glass.
With an ill-conceived, overly fussy design, to not point out a hefty price ticket, Google Glass’s less-than-stellar reception rapidly rendered it an Edsel within the Tesla world of high-tech gadgetry. As Truong wrote in a Sept. 11, 2023 characteristic for Entrepreneur, “Google failed to grasp the true unmet wants of its shoppers when the corporate first launched its ‘moonshot’ Google Glass in 2014. Regardless of the ‘good’ glasses’ cutting-edge know-how, the product was discontinued after only one 12 months. Regardless of its stay map imaging and hands-free net navigation, Google botched its evaluation of the product’s marketability — choosing a ‘clunky’ form, overcomplicated options, and an overwrought price ticket ($1,500).”
A Last Lesson from the Sharks
It’s a broadly accepted perception that sharks should preserve in steady ahead movement to outlive, and it’s a method that some misguided leaders cling to, even when it really works in opposition to their greatest pursuits. The reality is, the outdated shark adage is extra fable than aphorism. Though some species do acquire oxygen by water passing over their gills, sharks that depend on the interior pharynx to breathe can stay at relaxation and never asphyxiate. Transferring ahead with out first navigating a successful course has sunk a couple of enterprise.
Differentiating between a really important unfulfilled shopper need and falling prey to the “one thing shiny” syndrome will be tough. In Shark Tank phrases, it’s the distinction between the multimillion-dollar promoting Scrub Daddy, a product that actually delivered on an unmet shopper want, and the ill-fated Wake N’ Bacon, a pig-shaped alarm clock designed to evoke sleepers from dreamland by bombarding them with the aroma of America’s beloved cured pork product. (As a lot because it’s arduous to argue with the attraction of bacon, it turned out this invention was each a fireplace hazard and a meals security danger.)
As elemental as listening to shoppers could also be, Jack Truong factors out it’s solely step one in an extended course of. After gathering the pertinent suggestions knowledge, it have to be completely analyzed and put into the context of lifelike deliverables. Solely then can revolutionary methods aimed toward diminishing shopper ache factors and delivering pleasure metrics be set into movement, permitting firms to leverage applicable assets to create novel options that preserve the client happy and enhance firm gross sales figures accordingly.
