If you are selling products, you’re in trouble. Just look at a couple of category leaders. Target’s revenue in July: down 5%. Kroger’s revenue in August: down 3%. Home Depot’s revenue in July: down 2%.

There are clear economic headwinds to discretionary spending. In Canada, eating at restaurants is down two months in a row. In the US, student loan payments that have been on hold for years are kicking back in. There are 4x the number of 20- and 30-year-olds living at home than there were in the 60s. Budgets are tight. 

Your ability to sell products is subject to the overall economy. Things go well; people buy things. Things go poorly; people buy less.

But why, then, are 22% of Americans looking to travel internationally in the next 12 months? And why has spending on cosmetic procedures grown 10%?

Two things that have proven recession-resistant over the past 20 years are experience and transformation. No matter what kind of market we are in, people buy experiences and transformation.

Let me tell you the story of the average Faculty of Change client. A founder, 20+ years ago, had enough of the status quo in their industry. They had an idea for a new product or market, and the vision and drive to make that idea a reality. Fast forward ten years and their company is the category leader and holds the premium position in the market. Consumers perceive their product to be better—and it is better. They can charge more for the same product as their competitors. 

Fast forward another ten years—find yourself in the present day—and the world has caught up. The market they are in is now heavily commoditized. While they still retain the premium position in the market, they spend more time on defence than offence. The founder has moved on—they’re now on the board, in greener pastures or in the afterlife.

Does any of this sound familiar? 

New leadership understands that the status quo is untenable. Now is the time for strategic renewal. Here’s how:

Stage Experiences

The first step, which most companies take on their own, is moving from selling things to selling experiences. Faculty of Change can definitely help you to get here, but, in truth, everyone can do this—not just those of you with consumer-facing products. The key strategies companies undergo include:

• Redefining the purchase experience. Through either investment in digital or new channels, you make your product easier or more convenient to buy. Think of Starbucks creating their mobile app, which allows consumers to pre-purchase items in store. This is the realm of your innovation team or, often, technology vendors.    
• Moving from features to benefits. This is an easy one for companies to undertake: shift how you talk to consumers about yourself and your products. A life insurance policy may have the best terms or quickest underwriting, but to a consumer, you would highlight a pain-free application and the easiest claims experience.   
• Creating community. Through purchasing a product, consumers become part of a large group of like-minded individuals. Tool manufacturers do this well. Ask any tradesperson who uses Milwaukee about their tools and you need to clear your calendar for the afternoon. When you buy that red-bodied impact driver, you join the Milwaukee club.

Selling experience is the focus of the current management discourse. Articles in popular venues like The Atlantic tout experiences as the ultimate evolution of your business. But their advice is incomplete, and if you listen to them, you’re leaving value on the table.

Enabling Transformation

Now this is where people pick up the phone and call us. The transformation we are talking about here is not yours but your customers’. Think about some of the purchases you’ve made. The restaurant-grade appliances? You don’t need them, but you’d love to be the kind of chef that has them. Athletic apparel? You want to be the kind of person who needs that sweat-wicking fabric.

Enabling transformation is not easy, and that’s why most companies stop at experiences. Transformation requires a couple of foundational elements:

1. Understanding of the lived experience and unmet needs of your customers. You can’t enable personal transformations without understanding people’s current state and their desired end state. Once you have that, you can position your products as enabling that journey.   

2. Focusing on a specific segment of the market. When enabling transformation, the goal is to deliver an incredible amount of value to a specific group of people. You command a percentage of that premium through your pricing. It’s easier to position yourself to deliver more value to fewer people than less value to more people. If you truly enable transformation, you’ll exclude those people who don’t want to change. That’s fine—they aren’t your customers.   

3. Holding a clear point-of-view on the evolving nature of your market. Getting to a place where you can enable personal transformation is not an overnight process. It will take time. You need to understand what the market will look like when you are done with your evolution.

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Are you ready to evolve into a recession-proof business? Get in touch and let us help!