Anthony W. Ulwick

Was there a reason the organization was ready for change?

Yes. We had a product—a protective license product—that we had developed and launched. We spent seven years developing it based on hearing in the market that there was a need for it. I would argue and defend it as the best in the market, and we launched it to much fanfare. Then it kind of just did a ho-hum. So that example was fresh in our teams’ minds, and we could say, “What went wrong here?” It’s not the product development, and certainly not our marketing.

It’s certainly not our company’s reputation, and it’s not our overall knowledge of who to call on, or our ability to access any of the particular decision makers. It’s just that we didn’t ask the right people the right questions. That was probably one of the easiest ways to start convincing people: we had
just had a fresh example of a product innovation that was just lackluster.

Of all the actions taken to date, which had the most impact on revenue?

Clearly, changing our messaging helped us differentiate our products versus competitors’. Whenever you pick up a trade journal in our industry, you see a cow in an ad and virtually the same story: “We can help improve milk production, protein production, fat production, dry matter intake.” It doesn’t matter which ad you are looking at; it is virtually the same thing. So what we have been able to do is say, that’s not really what the people are focused on. It’s actually surprising when you think about it. Of the 165 outcomes that the dairy producer mentioned, not one of them identified any of those key points that you see in almost every one of the ads. So we didn’t necessarily have to go change our pricing or products or redesign or reformulate the products. The biggest impact was changing the messaging so people understood, “Oh that’s what that product can help me get done.”

Can you describe how the market strategy implementation rolled out?

By the end of 2013 we got all the results, and we spent the end of 2013 really going through the first stage of looking at our products, digesting the information, and asking

ourselves, “Okay, how do we act on this data?” Second, we tried to understand how our products could address some of the underserved outcomes, and we started thinking about the segments and how we should change some of our sales conversations, based on what segments a customer might fall into. By the time 2014 rolled around, we had really started the wholesale change to be forward facing to the market— changing our positioning and our Web design and promotional literature. By the first quarter of 2014 and certainly by the second quarter of 2014, we were full on into repositioning how we go into the marketplace.