Washing powder, washing liquid, washing capsules. They change on a week-by-week basis.
The packaging is never the same, and the ingredients change as well.
Their ability to provide ‘even whiter cleans, softer’ or any other range of features and benefits changes that alters over time.
The same thing happens with shampoo, and all sorts of other healthcare products and consumer products.
The reason for this is that people buy based on features and benefits, but the products have a life cycle, and the promise of features and benefits wears out.
So, when would Unilever or any other company decide it was time to change the box or the features or the ingredients?
Because they count, and when it falls, then they change.
The lessons to learn here are wide and vast for us in dentistry.
Number 1, the first thing to know is that you need to know your numbers.
You need to be counting the stuff that you do, but particularly the most important stuff that you do.
You need to know the margins, and you need to know the frequency of how it's selling and who it's selling to, so that you can be in a position to pull the lever and alter things, should the tide start to turn in the opposite direction.
Number 2, the second thing is that people always buy on features and benefits.
The feature or the benefit may be that they trust you or that you have a great reputation.
It may be a guarantee.
It may be the product that you're producing or providing.
It may be the environment in which you work in.
It can be any number of things, but knowing what your features and benefits are is a pretty useful tool to have.
The third thing is that all products have a life cycle.
When the numbers start to go down, and the features and benefits wear out, it's time to alter the product or to change it, or to adapt.
This is the greatest lesson in why dental businesses fail (and any other business, actually). People think that what worked yesterday will definitely work tomorrow.
It's time for many of us, and for anyone who has the opportunity to have a choice to live 3 years from now and longer, any shorter than that, and you're liable to sleepwalk into catastrophe.
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