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Recently I read a book. It resonates very well with me and inspires me to answer many business questions in my mind.
It's called The Critical Path Manifesto, written by my business school professor Robert Kelley.
In this article, I want to share my learning from the book and my experience with B2B companies.
According to Prof. Kelley,
<aside> 🪶 The critical path is the connection between what the customers want and want the company provides to them. The goal is to create the shortest, fastest, smartest, most effective, most profitable, best path to pleasing a large enough group of highly satisfied, highly profitable repeat customers who then help you bring in an increasing number of new profitable customers.
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Of course, a company's goal is to provide what customers want and earn a profit. However, it's easier said than done.
For example, many B2B software companies claim to help customers do better business. However, to get the benefits of the software, customers need to spend days to months to set up the system, depending on their business size. Then end-users need to spend hours learning how to use the software, and IT spends another trunk of time maintaining the system periodically. Those software companies may still win customers because there are no better solutions in the market. But in a fast-changing business environment, a new solution can come up any time, and these businesses are at risk. Just like Blackberry lost their markets to iPhone.
That leads to my second learning from the book: the critical path starts from customers. So the first step is to know your customers. For a B2B company, getting to know your customers includes the following aspects:
There are so many aspects companies should learn about their customers. However, from cofounder, C-suite to the front line, very few of them know customers well. In general, the more diverse the customer base, the more challenging to know them well. For example, many electronics companies have their sales team work onsite with their customers, and news about customers' product plan will get back to headquarter immediately.