ROAD AHEAD: INSIGHT BASED APPROACH FUELING 21st CENTURY'S WINNERS...

The early part of this century has gone into exploring the frontiers of a 'Solution Based Approach' to solving the customers' problems for gaining their business. While solution based selling is an evergreen concept, the greatest organizations of the 21st century are being rapidly built around their ability to unearth new & yet undiscovered needs of their target customers, creating a surge of requirement for newer experiences that take the world by storm and satisfying the same with breathtaking agility.

The greatest good you can do for another is not to share your riches, but to reveal to him his 
 own – Benjamin Disraeli

Many companies discovered products and solutions that could potentially capture the imagination of users, a number of such companies could not capitalize on them, as they neither had the vision of what their invention/discovery could achieve in the long term, nor had the staying power including patience for sticking to the same till it caught on. For example, Xerox corporation was one of the first organization to work on commercially developing the personal computer, but gave up the idea of scaling up the product in the early stages, which was capitalized by IBM & Apple.
Hence the true credit and the fruits of these inventions have repeatedly gone to those, who have discovered the need of their target customers, for these potential blockbusters and fueled the demand so generated, by producing breathtaking products & solutions and propagating them with amazing speed and efficiency.
Some of the finest examples of long-lasting organizations that have been created in front of our eyes are:
MICROSOFT- Discovered and fueled the needs for a standard & smart operating system to power the growing number of personal computer in the world,
WALMART- Discovered and fueled the need for a no frills- lowest priced economical solution of a huge majority of the customers,
INTEL- Discovered and fueled the need for faster and faster computing
INFOSYS- Discovered and fueled the need for increasing productivity through outsourcing by high Cost-of-Living economies and the need for clients to focus on their core strengths to win their battles in the market
GOOGLE- Discovered and fueled the needs of Information Hungry Internet Surfers
NOKIA- Discovered and fueled the needs for a smarter, economical, signal and battery efficient mobile phones for users on the move,
APPLE-   Discovered and fueled the need for a great user experience in technology product usage
FACEBOOK - Discovered and fueled the need for a great Social Networking Platform for friends
TWITTER- Discovered and fueled the need to express oneself to the world while on the move.
LINKEDIN- Discovered and fueled the need to have an online career profile to network with like minded professionals
AMAZON- Discovered and fueled the need for quick, instantaneous and online purchases through e-commerce and then the emerging  unlimited and flexible storage requirements by today's rapidly escalating memory needs of organizations.
CISCO- Discovered and fueled the needs of today's networked economies to create the networking infrastructure backbone.
DELL- Discovered and fueled the need for cutting the cost and configuring their own systems.
The list can include a number of more winning companies which have rapidly grown to grace the Fortune 500 list in a double quick time.
SAMSUNG: Innovation in display technologies powering the TVs, Mobile Screens and Computer screens coupled with an urge to create faster, better and cheaper products in consumer technology domain.
Apart from these, even companies like Subway, McDonald, Starbucks who have come about by creating an experience/unique need based approach are reinventing themselves to be able to read the trends and create their own markets.
While there have been a few and far companies in the last century, which challenged the status quo and created new markets, this century is seeing a explosion of such companies which are not only creating fantastic unforeseen products and technologies but are also creating world scale capacities and capabilities to satisfy and service the demand so created.
When winning companies discover a potential blockbuster need that needs to be unearthed, they just do not create a product or a service, but create a widespread  eco-system that goes to create a medium in which their core proposition swims and multiplies.
When Apple created an iPhone, it rapidly grew iStore to satisfy the growing demand for legalised music by iPhone users. Similary, when it created iPhone, it enabled an entire Application Development industry to create lakhs of applications that would engage its customers and enhance their experience.
Discover emerging trends and currently unknown needs that could erupt into volcanoes.
 A Brief Comparison on the 3 main approaches of marketing for organizations:

FACTOR	PRODUCT/SERVICE BASED APPROACH	SOLUTION BASED APPROACH	INSIGHT BASED APPROACH
Approach	A proactive approach without a clear customer focus. Create a product or service around core competence and try to fuel demand for the same. Based on own strengths and capabilities.	A reactive approach Identify the customer problems and needs, ask questions to unearth possible solutions with end in mind. Arrive at a solution and keep fine-tuning till the client is satisfied.  Network, integrate with partners as required to create an integrated solution to solve customer’s problem.	A well-directed, strategized proactive approach. Study pain points not yet addressed, identify potential trends and demand fuelling situations  (for example, rapid growth in technology usage leads to increased storage demand while the investments are limited and need to be optimized.
Customer Focus	Low.  More focus on own interests than the requirements. Self-driven than market driven. More focus on Push than pull.	High. Focused on selected base of targeted customers. Customer Driven. Combination of push & pull strategies with a fine balance between the two.	Very High, aimed at large segments of potential customers. Market driven & Customer Centric. Focus on creating massive customer pull
Attitude	Prescriptive	Analytical, Prescriptive & Incremental	Disruptive
Customer Engagement	Mostly after creating the product/service	During the period of engagement.	Before engagement with the customer and for the rest of the life time to come out with continuous upgrades.
Risk Involved	Medium. Build capacities as you grow or scrap project if not taking off.	Low. Higher chance of success than other strategies we are trading on a relative known path to solve discovered problems.	High. As apart from the need to hit the right button, the company also has to ward off potential competitors who can upstage in execution and incremental up-gradations.
Critical success factor	Economies of scale, Value for Money and an element of luck.	Customer relationships and close coordination with the markets, Analytical approach, Flexibility to adapt and consider wide alternatives and continuously fine-tune to hit the nail on the head and arrive at desirable end points.	Innovation, executive excellence & staying power. Proactive approach with eyes and ears not just focused on the market but also working along with the mind, other parts, brain and the other sense to create earthshaking solutions.
Relevance today	Limited	High. This is a minimum requirement for survival in today’s customer driven markets.	Very high. A must strategy for the organizations aiming for success in the 21st century.

How do the 21st century companies adopt the insight selling approach to stay ahead and create longlasting enterprises?
A) Focus on the segments of the market generally populated by progressive customers who are looking for newer experiences and are willing to adapt to new paradigms quickly.
B) Challenge status quo and look for disruptive ways to solve existing products and dramatically improve the user experiences.
C) Focus on creating a good first impression with early adopters that snowballs into a much larger demand with positive feedback loops that makes it multiply through viral effects.
D) Make it easy for early adopters through low barriers for adoption like, free trials, introductory offers, reach out programs etc.
E) Offer incentive programs to create a viral effect by rewarding those taking part in the buzz creation,
F) Focus on PR activities extensively instead of bombarding with advertisement campaigns till the volume scales up to support much larger promotional engagements. This will improve staying power without compromising the awareness creation programs. Focus on emotional and rational elements in communication rather than just being analytically and objectively persuasive.
G) Be obsessive about listening to customers and evolve the value proposition as the novelty will result in unforeseen glitches in the early stages of market creation.
H) Focus on customer education and concept selling through various channels as the more the customers know about the usage, the better it is for them to experience and spread the good word.
I) Communicate with an intention to create a pull rather than be seen as an obsessively aggressive sales promoter. Sometimes, companies create artificial scarcity as a strategy to create an excessively high pressured demand funnel to develop which will rocket the sales with a much higher surge.

A calculated and a balanced strategy with course correcting elements and an understanding that, great strategies fail to resurrect faulty product/service offerings, will enable organizations to create successful brands in the 21st century .