If you want to be successful, says Bill Wooditch, you have to fail more.
“Fail More” is the title of Wooditch’s new book, in which he asserts that inside every success there are remnants of failure, and in every failure there are pockets of success.
Wooditch, founder and CEO of a risk management and corporate insurance firm, recalls his tendency as a teen-ager and young adult to avoid those things that didn’t come easily to him (like algebra). “If I thought that trying would result in failure, I started to build excuses. The first two steps to failing more productively are to recognize the cycle of avoidance and then to have the courage to break the pattern and make the changes vital to growth.”
Managers of teams must get comfortable with “failing forward,” Wooditch states. That means distancing yourself from emotions. “You will feel emotions first, but you need to react strategically, not emotionally. Logic will be your guide to dispassionately analyze what went wrong. Then, armed with real data, you can make the adaptations necessary to improve the outcome on the next try.”
Don’t be too quick to label something as a failure, he advises. Many investments take time to yield significant payoffs. Follow your process.
If something needs to be adjusted, then adjust. But stay engaged with the process. “Ask yourself, ‘Are my actions moving
me closer to what I want?’ ‘Closer’ is a process that may take weeks, months or years to develop into success. Be patient, but get moving.”
Many B2B companies mistakenly believe that brand is only for B2C companies, says Lindsay Pederson, brand strategist and the author of “Forging an Ironclad Brand.” Brand fuels success for any business that serves human beings. Since both B2C and B2B companies serve human beings, the principles of brand govern both.
Identifying and articulating brand is how consumer goods and services companies distinguish themselves from competitors, but in B2B, many companies still lack knowledge that brand is the North Star. “If your competitors aren’t deploying a brand strategy, they’re handing you an unfair advantage. Take it,” Pederson states. “Consumer products businesses would kill to be in a category where nobody else knows that brand fuels competitive advantage.”
Yes, there are differences between B2C and B2B branding, but the similarities dwarf the differences. Pederson says both B2B and B2C organizations:
- Need to deliver something differentiated in order not to devolve into a price play.
- Strive to be viable in the short, medium and long terms.
- Sell to a whole human being — they know the buyer is motivated by a complex combination of emotional needs, functional needs and preconceived beliefs.
- Must bring something of value to the buyer in order to ask the buyer to pay money for it.
- Require customer loyalty for thriving profitability.
- Want to create value as a business, trying to grow and sustain a healthy P&L and high CLV (customer lifetime value).
“Whether you serve individuals or businesses, you already stand for a set of associations in the minds of your customers. Brand positioning happens with or without your assistance,” says Pederson. “Every decision and action you take as a company feeds those associations, for better or worse. But you need not be a passive bystander. Take control of your brand through the deliberate exercise of brand strategy.”
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