Ergin Is Perplexed By Mark Cuban Post

Hello John,

I was away for a long time and now i am back to good old USA!!! Here, this what i read and I can't believe so much opposite to everything you teach.http://blogmaverick.com/2010/04/06/why-you-should-never-listen-to-your-customers/ Wow! what gives!?? I appreciate all the inspiration you provide.Thank you.

ergin

Ergin, thanks for the heads up...

Mark Cuban is hugely successful. I think he is saying the same thing as me, just in other words...

***“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”***

1. This is one of those cute lines... but it begs the question "How to invent the future?" I think I am one of the few, if the only, that explains how (although I was inspired by Drucker on this point...) Our solution to a problem we experience is an invention. It is not there until we come up with it... then we research immediately, from customers, to find if it is in fact new... "It's a good idea, but does not exist..." We then develop the item based on this feedback. We go to the best place in the world to have prototypes made. We then test our thesis with the prototype, in the form of seeing if we can get enough orders from customers to cover a minimum, etc...

***Then it made a fatal mistake. It asked its customers what features they wanted to see in the product and they delivered on those features. ***

2. I would agree this is a fatal mistake, because there is no way to assess the value of those suggestions from the customers. First, it is all speculation if we just ask customers what they want, in the future. Note that our first approach is as customers trying to buy our solution to our problem, profoundly different initial contact... then speculation is over. When return with a finished product, and our goal is not to have a "winner" (that costs too much to accomplish) we merely want to have enough orders to cover a suppliers minimum in a workable amount of time, profitably. mark Cuban must get 100 million in orders for his projects to be successful, you and I need about $5000 in orders to get started.

As we come for reorders, our customers ask for changes. Since we have several hundred customers arranged around the USA, we can tell, via our sales reps, which requests are universal, and which are just local whimsy. We act on the universal requests, so we are grounded in what the customer wants.

If you come in and ask a customer what they want, they will ask for the sky. If you show them a coffee mug, they will ask or it in blue. Cuban is right of course, it is fatal to first ask customers what they want. Plan is is we ask if a solution exists. Plan B we show them something we found overseas. Either plan, we never ask customers what they want. We present something. I say so in my book and classes.***

***They put themselves in a never ending revolving door of trying to respond to customer requests.***

Sometimes a cute remark has to be backed up, and then an argument begins to break down. Apple Computer is a in the " never ending revolving door of trying to respond to customer requests." Microsoft has an ad campaign that precisely states microsoft is " in a never ending revolving door of trying to respond to customer requests." The difference is Apple succeeds, and microsoft does not. Apple is better at processing customer requests.

The Cuban says, "Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happen. (NB: I think he means "happy") Listen to them. Make them happy." Well, which is it. Listen, or do not listen?

I would say Mark Cuban is saying "don't spend a lot of money on what trying to find out what customers want in a new product. Find out if they want what you want to make. If, when they approve that, and they want small changes, then make those changes."

Also keep in mind Mark Cuban is a salesmen, which make his comments all the more useful to me, since I am not. Salesmen are a different breed of cat. Cuban recombines what is already there and sells it. I cannot do that, because I do not know how, it is not in my DNA. It is in his. WE are small biz people. But his observations as a top salesperson are very important. Although he is an auto salesman, I've even read CLOSE EVERY SALE by Joe Girard for his insights, a book I highly recommend.

So Mark Cuban creates a stir by saying NEVER LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. The he says listen to your customers. He and I agree that one should not listen when it does not matter, and we should listen when it does. WE agree, I think.

John

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