Apply Killer App Thinking to secure repeat business
In their business best seller Unleashing the Killer App…Digital Strategies for Market Dominance, Larry Downes and Chunka Mui define the killer app (or application) as an invention whose usefulness goes far beyond what its inventors intended, creating new industries, organisations and social structures and inadvertently destroying existing ones.
The Web tells us that the killer app is an application that dominates competition, or becomes industry standard; a highly acclaimed successful and popular computer application; or tech talk for the eternal search for the next big idea.
The telephone, TV, microprocessor and the Internet are all killer apps, with Internet-based e-mail being the most recent, and one of the most influential. Internet marketing and e-commerce are new industries spawned from the Internet, with new rules, new cultures and social structures. In many cases these industries are collapsing existing ones. An obvious example is the travel industry. Who needs a travel agent when you can go online and get yourself the best possible deal in just a few minutes? Some agencies have adapted to this new way of doing business, but many have also gone out of business.
Transforming the way we do business
In today’s fast moving world, killer apps are appearing faster and with greater frequency than ever before, transforming the way we do business. At the same time, the need to alter the way businesses relate to one another has never been clearer.
From the Welsh longbow, which decimated the French at Agincourt and effectively ended the Feudal Age, to Edison’s light bulbs, change often occurs not slowly and incrementally but discontinuously and in big leaps. The arch, the pulley, the compass, eyeglasses, the steam engine, the cotton gin, asphalt, the Model T, lifts, the personal computer, electronic funds transfer, and the first word processing program: these are inventions whose impact has extended far beyond the activities for which their creators built them. They established entirely new categories of goods or services and, by being first, dominated the market, returning several hundred percent on the initial investment. What does killer app thinking have to do with companies that sell products and/or services?
The answer is a simple one: the primary forces at work in spawning today’s killer apps are both technological and economic in nature. Invariably, killer apps wind up displacing unrelated older offerings, destroying and re-creating industries far from their immediate use, and throwing into disarray the complex relationships between business partners, competitors, customers, and regulators of markets. And not for nothing are they called “killer apps”, as they are often responsible for bumping off established companies.
Making an impact on your client’s business
You need to apply killer app thinking to your client’s business, and stop concerning yourself with the mundane sale. In supplying any product or service to your client, you want to do so in such a way that you have a real and sustainable impact on their business, shifting it from where it was before. The killer app creates generational change and has an impact that endures way beyond the window of value that is initially identified. Think radical innovation and breakthrough implementation: it’s not just about what the product/service will enable in the here and now, it’s about the impact all the way down the value chain. You have to think about how your solution will change processes, or enhance interaction with clients.
Every product/service has a defined lifecycle. You must be able to identify when, where and how you are going to replace your existing offering – that is part of the art of repeat selling.
Author: Ian Widdop
Director
Maximus