Preparation, Part One
Begin to read the final book NOW!
So here we go! It’s just two weeks (and a day) until the book is officially published!!
Have you preordered your copy yet? If not, do so now to ensure you get it as soon as possible:
It’s not too soon to prepare to read it. To practice what I preach on encapsulation, what would normally be a Preface to open the book is here a Preparation. I wrote it to help you create the most value from the book as possible.
And so let me share it with you now, in three parts due to its length (and, not coincidentally, to publish the final part on February 2). By reading it before you get the book you’ll already be set for chapter 1, particularly if you do the pre-work that I’ll get into in Part Three.
Engage!
Joe
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You’re leaving value on the table.
Whatever you sell to your customers today, I guarantee you they want more. I’m not talking about being better, faster, and cheaper, or delivering higher quality or greater convenience. It’s not about having more features and benefits, more engagement and sensory delights.
Your offerings are means, when what customers truly want are ends
All those things, and everything else you do for customers, are not enough. People don’t buy what you sell because they value your offerings in and of themselves. The offerings are means, when what customers truly want are ends.
The ends they desire are to have a better life or a better business. To be healthier, wealthier, wiser. To have meaning and purpose. To not just buy, but to become who they want to become. To not just have, but to be who they are meant to be. To not just go through life, but to flourish.
If you do not offer such ends, then you’re on your way to becoming a commodity supplier to some other company, one that understands that what customers seek today is the achievement of their aspirations.
What people want, in short, is to be transformed.
The good news is that you don’t have to completely overhaul everything about your business. You can begin with what you have today, reflect on what you already do for the aspirations of your customers—the why of what they buy from you—and then innovate, add, or purchase everything else you need to guide them achieve those aspirations. It starts with figuring out what business you are really in.
Understanding Economic Offerings
There are five and only five genres of economic output:
Commodities (fungible stuff)
Goods (tangible things)
Services (intangible activities)
Experiences (memorable events)
Transformations (effectual outcomes)
Transformations have always been around but were lumped economically into services
These five offerings form the Progression of Economic Value, from least valuable (commodities) to most valuable (transformations). While most economists recognize only the first three, in early 1994 I discovered that experiences were also a distinct economic offering. They had always been around but were lumped economically into services. There’s great distinction, however, between such uneventful activities as having mail or packages delivered, visiting a gas station, repairing an appliance, eating at a fast-food outlet, or signing up for internet service, and such memorable events as going to a concert or a movie, learning to play the piano, immersing yourself in a video game, or sitting down to a five-course meal at a fine-dining establishment.
I shared that insight with my biggest client at the time, Jim Gilmore, and after joining forces to create Strategic Horizons LLP, a thinking studio dedicated to helping businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings, in 1997 we published our first article on the concept, “Beyond Goods and Services.”[i] Then in 1999 we wrote the first edition of our book The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.[ii]
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, in speeches, workshops, and consulting with clients I had to argue that experiences were truly a distinct economic offering, and that we would soon shift from the Service Economy to the Experience Economy.
No longer. For many years now I’ve been able to just state the idea and everyone gets it. No one objects, for the reality is all around us. We’re deep into the Experience Economy. We’ve read umpteen articles on how people prefer experiences over things, how the former make us happier than the latter, and we know it in our bones. But the Experience Economy is not the end.
The Next Shift
Now the economy is shifting from experiences to that final offering, transformations. From creating memories to achieving aspirations. From ephemeral events to lasting change. From time well spent to time well invested.
