February 6, 2009

BE DiFFERENT ideas for General Motors - Part 1

Here are a number of BE DiFFERENT suggestions for GM strategists and planners:

Create a Survival Plan for the next 18-24 months, but expand your thinking to include demand side economics rather than supply side. Get serious about WHO you intend to SERVE and HOW you will WIN. It’s about customers and competitive positioning not technology and environmental programs. And don’t worry about sharing your plan with your competitors. The essence of your strategy will not be a surprise to them.

Get customer feedback on your plan. Does it resonate with them? Do they think it makes sense? Does it address the issues they have with you? Doing this not only makes your plan better, it also shows the market that you are open to customer involvement in your business rather than pushing your perceived solutions at it.

Get explicit about how you intend to do to earn people’s business in a way that distinguishes you from your competitors? You are dying because people don’t perceive that you are different than the other guys. You don’t give people compelling reasons to choose you rather that Ford or Chrysler or any other supplier.

Create an only statement for your business. This is the ultimate declaration of how you intend to be unique in the market versus the competition. ‘GM is the only auto maker (in Canada) (in the US) that ...’

Get your team of leaders together to hash it out; it will be the essence of your strategy. Show how you intend to enhance your relevance to current and future customers and make your competitors irrelevant. If you are not clear on your unique value proposition or if you don’t offer something that is different, price will play the dominant role in selling your vehicles. This is not a place you want to be in given that your costs are too high and reducing price will only make your financial position worse (not to mention price is easy to match).

FOCUS. FOCUS.FOCUS. You have limited resources (and likely to have fewer as you reduce your operating costs) so look at markets that have a good chance of producing solid returns. Europe should get renewed attention. Do you really need to develop 15 hybrids by 2012?

More BE DiFFERENT suggestions coming up. Stay tuned. Cheers.

Posted 2.6.09 at 09:22 am by Roy Osing | Permalink | Comments (0)