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Will Your Customers Make Your Next Solution a Blockbuster Hit? | What’s Your Edge?
If you’re like many of our customers, you compete every day to find new customers, and keep and grow the value of your existing customers. Welcome to What’s Your Edge? – a series of VisionEdge Marketing podcasts dedicated to helping you use data, analytics, process, and measurement to create a competitive edge for you and a superior customer experience. This is Laura Patterson and in this episode, we will leverage learnings from the movie industry to help ensure that your organization’s products and services (solutions) succeed and enable growth, or in the vernacular of the movie industry achieve blockbuster status.
Let’s begin with a story. Very early in my 14-year career at Motorola, I participated in a management development program (MDP) under the auspices of Gary Daniels, who at that time ran the Microcontroller Division. Over the years, you’ve probably heard me mention Gary and how much I admired his leadership and appreciated his mentorship. Something you may not know is that his father ran a movie theater. In one of our first MDP meetings he asked this rhetorical question, “how do you get people to come to your movie theater?” He didn’t wait for a reply, he said, “show a film people want to see.” His follow up question was, “how do you get them to come back?” He said, “make sure their experience met and exceeded their expectations, from the bathrooms to the concession stand, to the lighting, and so on.”
The movie industry, like the microcontroller industry, and very likely your industry, is a competitive and constantly evolving landscape. To succeed, movie theaters need the studios to produce high-quality content that is in line with what audiences want to see. This same concept applies to organizations of all kinds. To achieve blockbuster status, you need your product and service development teams to create solutions customers want and the service quality to boost customer experience and keep them coming back for more.
Use Data to Make Sure You Don’t Produce a Flop
How do you decide on the right solution concept, deliver it the way customers want, with the right services wrapped around it? You decide with data. Movie studios conduct extensive market and customer research to gain insights into audience trends. Movie producers use the data to determine what types of movies to make and which audience segments are most likely to pay to see it. While not every movie is a blockbuster and some may flop, this is a critical step in the movie production process.
Buy Your Best-Practices Workbook
Organizations must do the same. Armed with customer and market research you are more likely to understand your prospective customers and develop solutions that meet their needs. It’s not enough to simply create a solution and hope that people will use it. You need to be proactive and understand what your customers want and what will make them choose your offering over alternatives. Yes, you might get lucky without the data. And while data won’t guarantee market success, if your offer doesn’t solve your customers’ problem(s) or enable them to capitalize on an opportunity, the solution will be a flop. This is why it’s important to make the investment to understand your customers and what they want from your product or service. This is a good start, but there’s more to making a blockbuster hit.
5 Ways to Succeed at the Customer-Centricity Box Office
When it comes to making a successful movie, tips abound. Let’s walk through five customer-centric tips for being successful in the movie business that are just as applicable to every organization.
Prioritize Service Quality for Improving Customer Retention and Lifetime Value
We cannot leave this episode without addressing the second question posed by Gary, securing repeat business from customers. Making it easy is one critical factor. The other is service quality. Service quality plays a key role in ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, both in the movie industry and in your organization.
Gary’s father knew that movie theater customers expected a clean, comfortable, and enjoyable experience. He understood that the quality of service greatly impacts the customer’s decision to return. This includes factors such as the friendliness and professionalism of staff, the speed and efficiency of the concessions stand, and the overall atmosphere of the theater. The same is true for every organization. The quality of service you provide greatly influences whether a customer will return and continue to do business with you. Customers expect prompt and effective solutions to their problems, knowledgeable and helpful customer service representatives, and a positive overall experience. Failing to meet these expectations can lead to negative reviews, decreased customer satisfaction, and a decrease in repeat business. Therefore, prioritize service quality and continuously strive to improve it, to retain your customers, grow customer lifetime value, and increase customer satisfaction.
What Will You Measure to Recognize Box Office Success?
Our episode wouldn’t be complete without touching on the subject of measurement. Measuring the success is essential for both the movie industry and businesses to understand performance and identify areas for improvement. In the movie industry, box office revenue and audience reception are two key measures of a film’s success. The box office revenue provides a financial measure, while audience reception, such as movie reviews and ratings, are non-financial measures that give an indication of how well the film was received by audiences. For movie theaters, measures include seat occupancy, concession sales, and customer satisfaction.
There are variety of success measures for any organization and its solution, such as adoption, market share, category ownership, share of wallet, and customer lifetime value along with win/loss ratio, referral rate, and overall revenue and profitability. How your organization will declare success impacts which measures matter and are worthy to include in your performance management dashboard.
Circling back to Gary’s point, whether it’s a movie or a semiconductor, having a product or service that customers want and use is the first key to producing a blockbuster. Just as movie studios must produce high-quality content that is in line with audience trends, every organization must understand their target market and develop solutions that meet their needs. Continuously innovating, having a strong brand that delivers on the promise, and effective Marketing and Sales are all key success components. By following these principles, your organization can increase its chances of market success and ensure your solutions are adopted and achieve blockbuster status and a category leader, or in the case of Motorola microcontrollers, becomes industry standards and category owners.
Want more information on how to make your solution a star?
FAQ:
(written by Penn of Sintra.ai)
Q1: What does “blockbuster status” mean for a business solution?
A1: It means your products and services (solutions) achieve market success—driving adoption, growth, and repeat business—because customers want them and the experience meets or exceeds expectations. The movie industry analogy is useful: studios must produce content audiences will pay to see, and theaters must deliver a high-quality experience that brings customers back. In business, the parallel is solution-market fit plus service quality and accessibility.
Q2: How do you avoid producing a “flop” solution?
A2: Decide with data, not hope. Movie studios conduct market and audience research to understand trends and segment preferences before investing in production. Organizations must do the same: use customer and market research to validate needs, problems, and opportunity areas—then design solutions that solve those problems better than alternatives. Data does not guarantee success, but without it, you increase the probability of building something customers will not adopt.
Q3: What are five “box office” lessons for customer-centric growth that apply to any organization?
A3:
Q4: Why is service quality essential for retention and customer lifetime value?
A4: Because repeat business depends on experience, not just the offer. Just as theater customers judge cleanliness, staff, speed, and atmosphere, business customers judge responsiveness, professionalism, problem resolution, and overall ease. Poor service quality leads to negative reviews, reduced satisfaction, and lower retention—directly eroding lifetime value.
Q5: What should you measure to know whether your solution is a “hit”?
A5: Define success first, then measure accordingly. The movie industry uses box office revenue (financial) and audience reception (non-financial). Businesses can use measures such as adoption, market share, category ownership, share of wallet, customer lifetime value, win/loss ratio, referral rate, revenue, and profitability. These measures should be reflected in your performance management dashboard so you can monitor performance and improve outcomes.
Q6: What is the core takeaway for leaders?
A6: Blockbusters are engineered, not wished into existence. Use data to validate what customers want, invest in brand and familiarity, execute a strong go-to-market plan, make access effortless, and prioritize service quality. Then measure what matters so you can improve performance and increase the odds your solutions become category leaders.
View all episodes
By Laura Patterson-VisionEdge Marketing PresidentIf you’re like many of our customers, you compete every day to find new customers, and keep and grow the value of your existing customers. Welcome to What’s Your Edge? – a series of VisionEdge Marketing podcasts dedicated to helping you use data, analytics, process, and measurement to create a competitive edge for you and a superior customer experience. This is Laura Patterson and in this episode, we will leverage learnings from the movie industry to help ensure that your organization’s products and services (solutions) succeed and enable growth, or in the vernacular of the movie industry achieve blockbuster status.
Let’s begin with a story. Very early in my 14-year career at Motorola, I participated in a management development program (MDP) under the auspices of Gary Daniels, who at that time ran the Microcontroller Division. Over the years, you’ve probably heard me mention Gary and how much I admired his leadership and appreciated his mentorship. Something you may not know is that his father ran a movie theater. In one of our first MDP meetings he asked this rhetorical question, “how do you get people to come to your movie theater?” He didn’t wait for a reply, he said, “show a film people want to see.” His follow up question was, “how do you get them to come back?” He said, “make sure their experience met and exceeded their expectations, from the bathrooms to the concession stand, to the lighting, and so on.”
The movie industry, like the microcontroller industry, and very likely your industry, is a competitive and constantly evolving landscape. To succeed, movie theaters need the studios to produce high-quality content that is in line with what audiences want to see. This same concept applies to organizations of all kinds. To achieve blockbuster status, you need your product and service development teams to create solutions customers want and the service quality to boost customer experience and keep them coming back for more.
Use Data to Make Sure You Don’t Produce a Flop
How do you decide on the right solution concept, deliver it the way customers want, with the right services wrapped around it? You decide with data. Movie studios conduct extensive market and customer research to gain insights into audience trends. Movie producers use the data to determine what types of movies to make and which audience segments are most likely to pay to see it. While not every movie is a blockbuster and some may flop, this is a critical step in the movie production process.
Buy Your Best-Practices Workbook
Organizations must do the same. Armed with customer and market research you are more likely to understand your prospective customers and develop solutions that meet their needs. It’s not enough to simply create a solution and hope that people will use it. You need to be proactive and understand what your customers want and what will make them choose your offering over alternatives. Yes, you might get lucky without the data. And while data won’t guarantee market success, if your offer doesn’t solve your customers’ problem(s) or enable them to capitalize on an opportunity, the solution will be a flop. This is why it’s important to make the investment to understand your customers and what they want from your product or service. This is a good start, but there’s more to making a blockbuster hit.
5 Ways to Succeed at the Customer-Centricity Box Office
When it comes to making a successful movie, tips abound. Let’s walk through five customer-centric tips for being successful in the movie business that are just as applicable to every organization.
Prioritize Service Quality for Improving Customer Retention and Lifetime Value
We cannot leave this episode without addressing the second question posed by Gary, securing repeat business from customers. Making it easy is one critical factor. The other is service quality. Service quality plays a key role in ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, both in the movie industry and in your organization.
Gary’s father knew that movie theater customers expected a clean, comfortable, and enjoyable experience. He understood that the quality of service greatly impacts the customer’s decision to return. This includes factors such as the friendliness and professionalism of staff, the speed and efficiency of the concessions stand, and the overall atmosphere of the theater. The same is true for every organization. The quality of service you provide greatly influences whether a customer will return and continue to do business with you. Customers expect prompt and effective solutions to their problems, knowledgeable and helpful customer service representatives, and a positive overall experience. Failing to meet these expectations can lead to negative reviews, decreased customer satisfaction, and a decrease in repeat business. Therefore, prioritize service quality and continuously strive to improve it, to retain your customers, grow customer lifetime value, and increase customer satisfaction.
What Will You Measure to Recognize Box Office Success?
Our episode wouldn’t be complete without touching on the subject of measurement. Measuring the success is essential for both the movie industry and businesses to understand performance and identify areas for improvement. In the movie industry, box office revenue and audience reception are two key measures of a film’s success. The box office revenue provides a financial measure, while audience reception, such as movie reviews and ratings, are non-financial measures that give an indication of how well the film was received by audiences. For movie theaters, measures include seat occupancy, concession sales, and customer satisfaction.
There are variety of success measures for any organization and its solution, such as adoption, market share, category ownership, share of wallet, and customer lifetime value along with win/loss ratio, referral rate, and overall revenue and profitability. How your organization will declare success impacts which measures matter and are worthy to include in your performance management dashboard.
Circling back to Gary’s point, whether it’s a movie or a semiconductor, having a product or service that customers want and use is the first key to producing a blockbuster. Just as movie studios must produce high-quality content that is in line with audience trends, every organization must understand their target market and develop solutions that meet their needs. Continuously innovating, having a strong brand that delivers on the promise, and effective Marketing and Sales are all key success components. By following these principles, your organization can increase its chances of market success and ensure your solutions are adopted and achieve blockbuster status and a category leader, or in the case of Motorola microcontrollers, becomes industry standards and category owners.
Want more information on how to make your solution a star?
FAQ:
(written by Penn of Sintra.ai)
Q1: What does “blockbuster status” mean for a business solution?
A1: It means your products and services (solutions) achieve market success—driving adoption, growth, and repeat business—because customers want them and the experience meets or exceeds expectations. The movie industry analogy is useful: studios must produce content audiences will pay to see, and theaters must deliver a high-quality experience that brings customers back. In business, the parallel is solution-market fit plus service quality and accessibility.
Q2: How do you avoid producing a “flop” solution?
A2: Decide with data, not hope. Movie studios conduct market and audience research to understand trends and segment preferences before investing in production. Organizations must do the same: use customer and market research to validate needs, problems, and opportunity areas—then design solutions that solve those problems better than alternatives. Data does not guarantee success, but without it, you increase the probability of building something customers will not adopt.
Q3: What are five “box office” lessons for customer-centric growth that apply to any organization?
A3:
Q4: Why is service quality essential for retention and customer lifetime value?
A4: Because repeat business depends on experience, not just the offer. Just as theater customers judge cleanliness, staff, speed, and atmosphere, business customers judge responsiveness, professionalism, problem resolution, and overall ease. Poor service quality leads to negative reviews, reduced satisfaction, and lower retention—directly eroding lifetime value.
Q5: What should you measure to know whether your solution is a “hit”?
A5: Define success first, then measure accordingly. The movie industry uses box office revenue (financial) and audience reception (non-financial). Businesses can use measures such as adoption, market share, category ownership, share of wallet, customer lifetime value, win/loss ratio, referral rate, revenue, and profitability. These measures should be reflected in your performance management dashboard so you can monitor performance and improve outcomes.
Q6: What is the core takeaway for leaders?
A6: Blockbusters are engineered, not wished into existence. Use data to validate what customers want, invest in brand and familiarity, execute a strong go-to-market plan, make access effortless, and prioritize service quality. Then measure what matters so you can improve performance and increase the odds your solutions become category leaders.