What are you and your team aiming to achieve with your presence at AMB? As a machine designer, I have been visiting the industry's leading trade fairs for years. There, I observe that activities on machine manufacturers' stands focus primarily on maintaining customer relationships, establishing new business contacts and selling.
But successful companies are now going much further. They know that trade fairs offer far greater potential.
Who gets ahead
In times of intense global competition, the companies that uncover hidden opportunities are the ones that get ahead. The key lies in meeting customers' needs precisely.
Optimising an existing product concept, however, is a particularly poor way of delivering an unprecedented increase in value for the customer. Machine manufacturers that rethink things from the ground up, without allowing the familiar to limit them, can create the decisive added value.
One of our customers is currently demonstrating how this works.
Who knows how to innovate
This company has explored its customers' needs in depth, along with what their business will look like in the future. Its decision-makers quickly realised that optimisation would not be enough to achieve this goal.
They therefore decided to take an entirely fresh approach, consistently starting with the benefit to the customer.
The result is a product that is innovative in every respect: a new operating and service concept, supported by technological and design innovation; a new manufacturing and assembly concept, designed for modern production methods; and a new pricing concept, based on the economic value created for the customer. The market response has been overwhelming.
Where the potential lies
The basis for this success? An exceptionally deep understanding of customers—far deeper than the company itself had previously imagined possible.
Many companies claim to know their customers well, but few have truly understood their customers' businesses. Yet there is a simple and extremely effective step they can take: tap into the information potential of their trade fair presence!
After all, where else do you meet so many of your customers in one place as you do on your stand?
Everything you need
Thorough preparation, the right questions and active listening make the difference between getting the information you need for your innovations from customer conversations—and failing to do so.