Tuned In: Uncover the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs.

Retiring This Blog

It's been more than 18 months since we started this blog by announcing we were writing a book. Since then, we have used this platform to review ideas, get feedback on concepts and to write about the many examples we have seen of being Tuned In or Tuned Out.

When the book was published in June, 2008, it became a best-seller on Amazon.com and 800ceoread.com, and we have been very pleased and proud that it resonated with so many people.

It's time for us to move on. New projects and opportunities are taking more and more of our time, so this will likely be our last blog post. We will keep the blog (and this site) up for historical reference and for those who discover the book in the future.

Thanks to the many, many people who provided guidance, inspiration and feedback as we took this journey from idea to best-seller.

Craig, Phil & David

On the Road with Tuned In

First and most important, a big thank you to everyone who purchased our book and helped it become a #1 best-seller on Amazon.com and 800-CEO-READ.com. And to Barnes&Noble.com for making it a Pick-of-the-Week.

Now that Tuned In has been published, it is time to get the word out to the world. This means TV and radio interviews, magazine and blogger reviews, speaking at book stores, meeting with business associations and civic groups, and lots of airports!

Here are a few highlights...

Many people have reviewed the book on their blog including David Spark, Mike Moran, Louis Columbus and Susan Cartier Leibel.

There are more than a dozen 5-star reviews at Amazon.com (thanks for your kind words Brad Shorr, Mike Volpe, F. Stanton Sipes,  Michael Hopkins, Julie Neal, Dharmesh Shah, Paul D. Gillin,  Anne Pauker-Kreitzberg,  Kevin Myers, John D. Leonard, Tracy L. Needham and John Chancellor).

We have conducted a number of media interviews including Fox Business, ABC News and Sky Radio.

Several national magazines have reviewed the book including Inc. Magazine and US News & World Report.

A series of Tuned In webinars and articles by several industry experts has been running in the Pragmatic Marketing community.

All in all a very busy couple of weeks, and we have a lot more planned in the upcoming months! We'll keep you posted here and provide full details in the News and Reviews sections of the Tuned In website.

Lastly, if you would like a chance to win a copy of Tuned In, our friend Heather Hamilton is running a contest to create a "tuned in" tag line for her updated One Louder blog.

In the studio

This week I was in the studio recording an introduction to the audio book version of Tuned In. It was fun to do the recording and to sit with the engineer as he removed my stumbles and audible pauses.

The audio book will be available in iTunes and via Audible and should be complete and ready for sale in about two weeks.

The Heat is On!

Summer is here, Tuned In is out in stores and many of you are already reaching out with words of encouragement and comments on the book. The heat is definitely on now. We appreciate all of your support. The book is doing great thus far ... hitting #1 for most of the week on Amazon for sales of books overall and in our category and gaining an average 5 star review. Pretty heady stuff.

But, some of you are also a little bit miffed about our comments on how chasing outcomes and innovation one-ups is tuned out. Others feel we've not gone deep enough to describe how to become tuned in. I received a couple of communications this week privately that I want to share the essence of publicly because it is central to our Tuned In concept.

"We take issue with your characterization of who is tuned out. If you are in a new emerging market with a never seen before technology breakthrough, it may well pay to tell the world what it needs. Further, customers can't define what it is they want (they usually don't know) so our internal experts are in a better position to define it."      

We appreciate these perspectives. They are consistent with many that we discovered in our research when we surveyed companies and business leaders. When we sat down to write Tuned In, this was a core issue. We talked at length on these topics because we knew they would be controversial, running head on into the issue of how businesses create breakthroughs. And while it's hard to draw lines in the sand that apply to every situation, we did decide to come down pretty harshly on these topics for two simple reasons:

1. We saw far too many leaders and companies trying to change the game by guessing. They had done little to no research into markets and individual needs and instead built products they thought would be innovative and used their sales and marketing organizations to prospect for solutions to problems that people would pay money to their businesses to solve. Heavily service intensive projects resulted and these companies struggled mightily to scale. In short, it was a VERY expensive way to do business that nearly always resulted in a struggling business.
2. The biggest successes and most innovative products/companies we found came from those who were NOT first to market with new technology or a new idea. It was odd to see in many respects but as it turned out folks who observed dissatisfied users and buyers that passed on buying anything were the ones that found the real breakthroughs and ultimately built winning businesses. They spent twice as much as their peers in market research and it paid dividends in innovation ... because it produced relevant innovations. 

For those of us who aspire to more complicated answers to problems and rich, scientific evidence of a new formula for success, we apologize for the conclusions of Tuned In. But, it really is this simple. If you want to create a winning business, build real and deep connections to what your buyers value most. Everything else is secondary. 

This is a hard pill for smart, experienced entrepreneurs to swallow because they do have really perceptive insights and the ability to create some unbelievable breakthroughs in thinking that are core to new innovations. But, the question is where do you apply that talent?  First or second.  Tuned In found that if you start with an urgent, pervasive problem that a specific set of buyers can quantify and THEN apply innovation, you'll create a resonator. The other way around builds Newton's, Iridium's and a whole slew of .com's that went up in smoke. 

Keep the comments coming over the summer. We're thrilled with how this is all going. 

Tuned In released early!

It looks like our baby arrived a week early. From all the notices we've received in the last 24 hours from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, Tuned In has reached all the retail outlets and is now shipping. If you've been following us here and like the concept, please let everyone in your network know and encourage them to buy a copy next week. The early stages of a book's release are critical to establishing it as a Tier 1, 2 or 3 on the pecking order.  We'd like to think we have a Tier 1 but as we say in the book "our opinion although interesting is irrelevant".  It's yours that matters. 

For those who ask you what the book is about, give them the following. I was looking at the back cover that Wiley created for us and had to smile at how well they captured the essence of the book.  Here's how it reads:

______________________________________________________________________________________

Do you 'resonate' in your market?

When it comes to creating and bringing new offerings to market, "tuned out" organizations get it wrong. They ignore the strong signals being sent about what problems buyers badly want solved and what solutions they would happily pay for.  Tuned In organizations, on the other hand, take a radically different approach. They tap into the wider mind of the market and connect deeply to what their buyers value most, creating breakthrough offerings--called "resonators"--whose value is so immediately apparent they seem to sell themselves. 

Tuned In shows you six simple, yet powerful, steps to creating products, services or ideas that resonate right out of the gate. 

Uncover Opportunities Others Don't See
"When companies think they know what customers need, it invariably end badly. Tuned In shows, step-by-step, how to create unique products and services in areas that established organizations fail to recognize."
- Rob McGovern, Founder of CareerBuilder.com and Chairman/CEO of Jobfox.com

Gain a Sustainable Competitive Edge
"This is a unique and fresh approach to how today's fortunes are made."
- Rick Page, author of the #1 best-seller, Hope is Not a Strategy

The Real Difference Maker
"The most important thing a CEO has to do is make sure his or her company is, and stays, Tuned In. There are ongoing challenges with people, culture, strategy and execution, but the real difference maker is consistently producing products and services that the market loves."
- Steve Bennett, CEO (retired) of Intuit

Build Deep Connections with Your Market
"Tuned In is a straightforward, common sense approach to making connections with the marketplace. Authors Stull, Myers and Scott have given us a great reminder of what so many established stars, and those on their way, already know. 'Find out what your fans want, and find a way to give it to them.'"
- Jody Nachtigal, Personal Manager at Arcadia Group Management and Co-President of Kissing Booth Music

______________________________________________________________________________________

Many thanks to Rob, Rick, Steve, Jody and the thousands of others who have helped shape Tuned In. We sincerely appreciate all of your comments and help through this process and hope you enjoy the book. We'll keep you posted on how it's working out in the market.   

Our Virtual Book Tour

We're getting active speaking about Tuned In. This past week Craig, David and I sat down for an interview with Elizabeth Marshall of Author Teleseminars and Craig spoke to SkyRadio. They are both available for download in the news section of our blog.  We also announced a 6 week webinar series that begins next week with Art Petty speaking on Tuned In Leadership. 

It's fun to be out talking about the things we found in the book again. The six months in between turning over a manuscript and the actual publication of the book almost make you forget the good parts and the reasons why you worte it in the first place. We were re-energized by the experience for sure but also had to take a step back and appreciate two of the major takeaways:

1. Anyone can tune in and create a product or service that resonates in their marketplace. The range of people and stories we found of companies large and small, non-profits, government agencies, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, realtors, even churches, authors and rock bands who created resonators speaks volumes on the power of the concept.
   
2. Tuning in is a cultural transformation that impacts the core of your business. When Craig talks about getting tuned in, he's focused on how to create products people want to buy. When I talk about it, I'm relaying how build a business that achieves sustained success. When David talks about tuning in, he's referring to how to build real and deep connections to things your buyers value most. Product management, business strategy and marketing communications all benefit.

We're anxious to share all we've learned with you and hope that it provides a positive incremental impact on your work, career aspirations and business. See you on down the road.   

Thank you for helping us to write Tuned In! (We have a complimentary advance copy for you!)

Note: If you've been linked to in this post, we have an early copy of our book Tuned In ready to send you. Please read below for details!

We have been very fortunate to have so many people care about this project, offering their time and thoughts on how to make it special, willingly and without any expectation of something in return. More than two hundred and fifty people made material contributions. Without their help, we have no doubt the book would stand much less chance of resonating with readers. The people in this list offered keen insights are what make writing the book a special endeavor.

The people below are among those who helped us. Some of you took the time to be interviewed by us. Many bloggers added to the conversations around the Tuned In concept. You all greatly enhanced our view. In particular, the incredible voices of the people listed below made writing this book much easier. Check out their companies and blogs!

In the blog world, when someone writes a great post, you link to it. It’s a virtual pat on the back and acknowledgement that the effort was worthwhile. And it recognizes the original idea. So in that spirit, we wanted to thank all of you in this post and also by including you in the acknowledgements pages in the hardcover book. So not only are you in this post, but you are also listed in the book itself with our thanks.

Our publisher has kindly agreed to supply early copies of Tuned In for each of you. If you're in the list below, just go to this link, supply your contact information, and we will ship you an advance copy of the book before they hit stores in early July.

Alas, you won't get the spiffy hard cover with a dust jacket because it is still at the printer (you can preorder that and get it in early July). Instead you will get an early paperback version ahead of the rest of the world.

And thanks for your help in creating our book.

Oh, and one more thing. We've met some people since the manuscript was due to our publisher. Sorry you didn't make it into the list. And if we forgot someone or made a mistake in the list, which we are sure we have, apologies in advance.

Thank you to the following:
Chris Hoover
Bob Corrigan  
Laura Ries   
Seth Godin   
Art Petty   
Geoffrey Moore   
Nilofer Merchant   
Kristin Zhivago 
Guy Kawasaki  
Anne Pauker Kreitzberg   
Heather Hamilton   
Alan Armstrong, Ethan Henry, and Saeed Khan   
Scott Sehlhorst   
Gopal Shenoy  
Joel Spolsky   
Roger Cauvin   
The Cranky Product Manager   
Jeff Lash   
Brad Baldwin   
William Hsu  
Paul Young   
Rich Mironov  
Robin Lowry, Peter Ganza, Stewart Rogers, Allan Levson, and Julian Byrne  
Bonnie Rind   
Ivan Chalif 
Rob Grady   
Scott Gatz  
James Robertson   
Bikram Gupta  
Bruce McCarthy  
Gopal Shenoy   
Adam Bullied   
Paul Dunay   
Charlene Li   
John Jantsch   
Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, and Mike Volpe   
John Dodds  
Adrienne Tan and Nick Coster   
Ardath Albee  
Douglas Karr   
Sean Branagan, John Whiteside, and Maureen Rogers   
Michael Stelzner   
Debbie Weil  
Eric Sink  
Johanna Rothman   
Garr Reynolds   
Jill Konrath  
Bob Schmonsees  
Grant Kitching  
John Moore  
Gustavo Arizpe   
Mark Howell   
Brother Maynard  
Jeff Giesener   
Marty Taylor Collins  
Paul Dunay   
Tom Hackelman   
Kevin McGrew   
Amitai Givertz  
Derek Lee   
Ryan Hunter   
Michael Fischler 
Don Jarrell 
Paul Wilson  
Dan Nottingham   
April Benetollo   
Jennifer Cambern   
Avni Rambhia 
Clif Kranish 
Jeanne Strepacki  
Tom Wood  
David Adams   
Wayne Dong 
Ryan Martens   
Robert Duffner   
Todd Radtke  
Gene Villeneuve 
Sue Holub  
Mark Levy   
Mark Roberts   
Steve Johnson   
Kevin Myers   
Doug Nicholas   
Greg Strouse   
Phil Toole 
Adele Revella 
Dr. Connie Mariano   
Doug Ducey   
Steve Bennett   
Jim Davis   
Roger Helms 
Jim Basille   
Jim Malcolm 
Keith Boswell   
Michael Harris   
Rich Corley   
Steve Goldstein 
Web Ink Now
Marc Sokol 
Fred Amoroso   
Mark Bonfigli 
Matthew Rizai  
Don Bulens  
Dick Costello   
Wolfgang Koester   
Tom Aley   
Chris Morrison   
Ian Bonner  
Cliff Pollan   
Larry Schwartz   
Dave Simbari   
Barry Bealer  
Armando Viteri   
Pat Sullivan   
Dee Rambeau  
Tim Butler   
Mike Grandinetti   
John Carrington 
Christophe Fabre   

We’re also indebted to the product management associations around the world that connected with us and allowed us to test the Tuned In concept in their forums.

 
Atlanta Tech Product Management Association   
Austin Product Marketing and Management  
Australia Product Management Association  
Boston Product Management Association  
British Columbia Technology Industry Association 
Calgary Product Management Association  
India Product Management Forum  
Israel Product Management Association  
Puget Sound Product Management Forum 
San Diego Product Management Association   
Silicon Valley Product Marketing Association  
Tampa Bay PMA   
Toronto Product Management Association   
Triangle Product Marketing Association   
UK Product Marketing Forum   

Again, if you're listed here, please go to this link to get your complimentary book. Thank you.

Why we wrote the book

When Craig, David and I came together to talk about the ideas that came to be this book, we thought we were going to write a book about Pragmatic Marketing … what it was and why it worked. But, being the curious types that we are, we started asking ourselves deeper and tougher questions. Did you ever wonder: Why Starbucks and not Peets? Why the iPod and not Zune?  Why American Idol and not Star Search? Or, why the Wii and not Playstation?  Were these ‘hits’ just created by people smarter, luckier, or born with more talent than the rest of us?

As we began to dig a little deeper behind the scenes, we started finding some answers to these questions that opened up a whole new picture for us of what it was we really did for businesses and what we really  needed to write about. So, we started a research project that searched deeply into methods that winners used to build products, lead their businesses and market their solutions.  We talked to hundreds of CEO’s and interviewed thousands of companies and found some fascinating things that formed the core of what we wrote about in Tuned In.   

On the plus side, we found dozens of companies that had a different perspective about why they were in business. They focused their time and energy not on ‘creating an innovative new solution to profit from’ but on building ‘real and deep connections to the things their buyers valued most’. They were winning and winning big in their marketplaces. 

But, we also found far too many businesses who struggled to answer some very basic questions like:

• What business are we in?
• What businesses are we not in?
• Who are our buyers?
• What’s unique about our offering?
• What’s our positioning strategy?
• How can we compete? 
• Why do the other guys seem to win more often? 
• How can we turn a profit? 

The differences in performance were stunning. But, here’s the part that really surprised us. When we hit the walls that we did with business leaders, we asked ourselves why. How could they not have good answers to these fundamental questions? What we’ve come to realize is that the majority of business professionals just aren’t spending enough time tuning in.

It’s a cultural disconnect at the core of far too many companies today. And, it’s crippling in a tough economy. Instead of going out into the marketplace to try to understand people’s problems and then bringing this information back to the company to build products that people want to buy, tuned out companies ‘guess’ at what the market wants and use their own opinions to make investment decisions because  they ‘know better’. Then they build something awful and try all sorts of gimmicks to try to ‘tell’ buyers why they need it, often using expensive advertising to ‘push’ dissonant ideas out into an unreceptive mass market. This tuned out approach is much more likely to lead to failure—and to struggles with questions like those above.

Tuned In companies took the opposite approach, one that works from the market back in to the company. These businesses spent their time mastering a six step process:

1. Find Unresolved Problems - that their buyers had that were urgent, pervasive and they were willling to pay money to solve them.
2. Understand Buyer Personas – to identify specifically who had the problem and which audiences were the best targets for change.
3. Quantify the Impact – the incremental benefit that buyers would get by switching from what they do today to a new approach. 
4. Create Breakthrough Experiences – that the market appreciates and identifies as a competitive advantage that lasts. 
5. Articulate Powerful Ideas – to establish memorable concepts that cause buyers to act.
6. Establish Authentic Connections – that speak directly to your buyer’s problems in a language and medium they can trust. 

What is so fascinating about the tuned in approach is that it works so amazingly well for all kinds of organizations. We identified nonprofits, business-to-business enterprises, e-commerce companies, independent consultants, churches, and even dentists and lawyers who have created resonators and built growing and profitable businesses. Although they serve a wide variety of markets, these different types of organizations all used the same approach to discovering and launching their resonator. They listened intently, embraced buyer needs passionately, and worked diligently to create the best possible customer experience.

Tuned In is not a book on a new business theory. It’s a proven process for building and sustaining success. We wrote the book to provide a roadmap that others can follow easily … to create the kind of business everyone wants. 

47 days and counting ... what have we learned?

Tuned In will hit the bookstores on June 27. It's been doing very well in pre-orders, hitting the top ten lists of Amazon and Barnes and Noble a couple of times in the 30 days since our first preview in The Pragmatic Marketer. Craig, David and I are just starting to hit the road with a full event calendar of keynotes, briefings and online interviews. You can keep up with all of the progress at www.tunedinbook.com and maybe connect in with some associates.   

One of the activities we like to do during any launch of a new product is to be careful not to go completely in to 'tell' mode but reserve some time for listening. As most of you know by now, a major key to success for tuned in businesses was the time they spent observing the market and discovering unresolved problems. We've got some early indicators of a trend I wanted to share with you this week and get your feedback. 

Tuned In seems to be developing an affinity with small business owners as a philosophy for managing their business through the current recessionary climate. 

We're taking a step back and wondering what to make of this. We wrote the book to be a foundation for any business in any industry and in any situation. We found companies following the process and succeeding in horrifically down markets -- like the current real estate market -- and in hot, competitive markets -- like wireless technologies. Following the process enabled their businesses to grow faster, become more profitable and develop strong customer loyalty.  The question we're asking now is whether or not this is particularly true if you're small and the economy is weak. 

Kristin Zhivago has been writing a multi-part analysis of how to transform your company ("recession proofing") in her RevenueJournal blog. It seems to me that the things she is writing about (and in reality what we putting forth in Tuned In) is that the foundation had best be solid when times get tough. I've always said about the people I've worked with that "you never know what you have and who they are until you get into a crisis situation with them".  It is only when times are tough that their true colors show through. People (and businesses) seem to always return quickly to their core under pressure.

So, perhaps our timing is perfect with the launch of Tuned In as the market might be more receptive to a focus on building a solid foundation that will enable them to survive this downturn. Certainly, many of the stories in the book are about businesses that created a dominant position out of situation where the market was less than receptive. We're convinced that you can as well. 

What do you think?  Does Tuned In resonate best with small businesses in tough times?   

Top Ten Tuned In Strategies for 2008

Thanks to everyone for turning out for our webinar yesterday. It was a great session and we particularly enjoyed all of the follow-up stories and questions. It really helps us stay connected to the topics and issues you are finding most valuable. We appreciate it!

One of the key areas we've been investigating is providing a simple action plan for moving an organization's culture from being one that is primarily tuned out to one that emphasizes being tuned in. You all seemed particularly interested in two summary topics we presented on this subject--our Resonator Index and our Top Ten List of Tuned In Strategies for 2008. We'll review the highlights of the top ten list in this blog and talk about the Resonator Index in our next post. 

Top Ten Things to Do to Get Tuned In for 2008
1. Increase the time you spend in research -- tuned in businesses and leaders spend twice the amount of time researching the market as followers. Schedule time to increase both qualitative and quantitative studies.
2. Build plans around the top 5 new unresolved problems in your space -- instead of focusing only on incremental improvements to the things you have, identify new growth opportunities by aligning to the new market problems you've identified.
3. Develop one-page proposals for each -- simple communications that explain what problem you are solving, who they impact and how much 'incremental value' you can create.
4. Refine your buyer persona profiles -- to ensure that you have an accurate, up-to-date view of the needs, preferences and value criteria for each potential purchaser of your offering.
5. Prioritize investments -- based on how they rate in the categories of urgent, pervasive and willing to pay. Are they 'nice to have' or 'got to have' solutions?   
6. Benchmark experience breakthroughs -- to identify the quality of the total picture the customer evaluates you on ... from discovery to buying to packaging to using to servicing. 
7. Publicize your distinctive competence -- by making it the centerpiece of everything you do internally and externally, particularly in new marketing communications.
8. Communicate through 'new rules' -- by emphasizing thought leadership over promotion and referrals over leads. The key aspect of the new rules of marketing is an emphasis on publishing. 
9. Eliminate tuned out programs -- any aspect of your organization that is emphasizing pushing themes that sound like 'buy my product' or 'me, me, me' to your customers. 
10. Schedule time for culture and team alignment -- quarterly to refresh and recharge so that you can keep your team in the right frame of mind to act positively as real-time issues surface. 

These activities align very well with the cultures, strategies and execution philosophies of the successful companies (and leaders) that we studied. We're confident that if you made these a foundation for building your 2008 plan, best-in-class results will follow.