A couple of years back, The Profit’s Marcus Lemonis shared his Three Ps of a successful business: people, process, and product. Sound advice, but once you’ve got those principles under your belt, we think there are three more Ps you’ll want to add to your list: personalized, proactive, and predictive. Given that the first of Lemonis’ own three Ps is people, we think he’d like what we’re about to say.
By providing a personalized, proactive, and predictive experience for your employees and customers alike, you strengthen the relationships that help keep your business profitable for years to come. After all, the profit is the name of the game (and the TV show). In the interest of rolling up our sleeves and getting into the nitty-gritty just like Lemonis, here’s a closer look at each of your new Ps:
Personalized. Lemonis has made a career out of identifying and addressing the weak points of a company. By listening across all channels and tailoring solutions to meet specific needs, you can have the same positive impact.
Here’s an example: you’re in the airline industry and you note that your customers get frustrated when their flights are cancelled. You design an app that allows customers to quickly choose a new flight without waiting in line, which helps reduce headaches and delays. By engaging at the right time and with the right method, you’ve not only saved your customers a bit of hassle but you’ve let them know that you’re willing to stand out from the crowd to keep your relationship with them strong.
Proactive. Every day, new smart devices are connecting us to the Internet of Things, providing us with data we simply had no access to before. With the right system in place, your customers’ data can help achieve your goals as well as their own.
Let’s say you just sold a couple of company cars to one of your customers. You know from the company’s profile that it’s interested in going green, and the data its cars are sending you shows that they never exceed the range of your electric vehicles. Noting that the company’s corporate fleet will likely have to expand soon, you share the data, detailing the environmental impact and financial savings of an electric fleet. You get the sale, and your customer gets a reduced carbon footprint.
Predictive: We’ve hinted at it already, but a big part of how the three new Ps work for your company is through data analysis. But that data can do so much more than inform you of current opportunities and trends in customer sentiment. By combining internal and external data you can discover patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. High snowfall could mean an increase in binge watching, for instance. Whether you sell HDTVs or advertise on them, a turn in the weather could mean big opportunities. McKinsey research points to between a 10 and 15 percent increase in sales when your data indicates these sorts of customer usage patterns.
These three new Ps are meant to work in harmony with the first three which Lemonis outlined for us all on The Profit, so don’t go throwing concern for your product out the window in favor of a proactive enterprise resource planning solution. Instead, think of these new Ps as the next chapter in the story of the success of you and your business—a tale definitely found filed under the letter P.
If you’d like to find out more about how personalized, proactive, and predictive tools can help your bottom line, check out this video.