Products Come and Go — Customers Will Always Have Needs

One of the most important things I’ve learned in my CRM career is that innovation is the biggest driver of long term success for any business. By long term, I mean well beyond the lifetime of a product or service. I’ve worked with many companies that have owners that seem to be riding into the sunset, with products that are slowly being disrupted, not necessarily by new business models, maybe just competitive innovations along technology dimensions. But eventually, where the technology allows for a more cost efficient business model, the demise of the incumbent is swift and decisive.

We’ve always used the term innovation to describe the cool new companies coming online with products we never really knew we needed. Clearly, these people are just smarter than everyone else because we never thought to tell them we needed this product, right? In fact, they may not be smarter, but simply view the world differently than many of us. Understanding this difference is critical if you wish to con…