existing strengths?


• What can be magnified, made larger, or extended? • What would happen if you exaggerated? Overstated? • What can add extra value? Can you make your prod- uct do more things?


• What can be duplicated? Doubled? Repeated? • What’s missing that could be useful? What are the gaps that have to be completed? What else do you need to know?


• How could you carry it to the dramatic extreme? Example: Can you add more frequency? IKEA, the Swedish furniture chain, figured out a way to expand its retail traffic by renting Christmas trees. “The spirit of Christmas can’t be bought; but, for $10, you can rent it,” the IKEA ad said. For $20 – $10 for the rental and $10 for the deposit – IKEA would rent you a Douglas fir in New York City, where trees go for $50 and up. After the holidays, customers returned the tree and IKEA would mulch the tree for their garden or donate it to their community. The customer also received a coupon for a free four-year-old blue spruce sapling to help save the environment. Customers could pick up their tree in the first week of April. Just by being extra-nice to its customers, IKEA made it worth their while to visit a store three separate times.


MODIFY?


At one time, the Ford Motor Company had 60 percent of the automobile market. General Motors asked ques- tions about modification and came out with a philoso- phy that stated, “A car with every shape and color for every purse and purpose.” Henry Ford responded with, “Any customer can have a car painted any color – so long as it is black.” Ford’s sales slumped and, by the 1940s, the company had just 20 percent of the new car market. GM, by modifying their products to the market, took the lead. What can be modified? Just about any aspect of anything. Ask: • What can be modified about the way you sell? • Can you change meaning, name, color, form, shape? • Can you give it a new twist? • What doesn’t feel right? What can you do differently? • What changes can be made in the sales plans? In the process?


• In what other form should you present your product? • Can the package be combined with the form? • Can you change your perspective? How would your teacher look at it? Your father? Competition? Bill Gates? Napoleon?


Example: Can you give it a new twist? Is it possible to outsmart the competition without outspending them? Sheri Poe, founder of Ryka, Inc., found her market for


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women’s sneakers by creating a new twist in her market- ing plans. Instead of selling just her sneakers, she also sold her concept: “The first sneaker made for women, by women.” Instead of concentrating her advertising ef- forts directly on the consumer, she marketed to aerobics instructors and salespeople.


PUT TO OTHER USES?


Find an idea, product, or service and then imagine what else you can do with it. A subject takes its meaning from the context in which you put it. Change the context and you change the meaning. George Washington Carver – botanist and chemist – discovered more than 300 uses for the lowly peanut by constantly looking for new uses. Ask: • In what other ways could your product be used? • Are there new ways to use it as is? • Can you make it do more things? Can you find other benefits?


• Can you modify it in some fashion to fit a new use? • What’s being wasted that can be put to use? • Other extensions? Spinoffs? • Other markets? Example: Are there new ways to use it as is? In 1956, the Jacuzzi brothers, who sold water pumps for farm use, designed a special whirlpool bath as a treatment for their cousin’s arthritis. They sold a few for other victims. It wasn’t until 1968 that Roy Jacuzzi discovered another use and another market for it – the luxury bath market – and bathrooms were never the same again. The Jacuzzi®


sold like crazy across the country, from California to the White House. ELIMINATE?


New ideas are sometimes found when you subtract something from your subject. Through repeated trim- ming of ideas, objects, and processes, one gradually narrows it down to that part or function that is really necessary – or makes it appropriate for another use. For instance, if you omit the warlike function from a tank and keep only the caterpillar track, you create a tractor. Ask: • What should you omit from the way you sell? • Should you divide anything? Split up? • What’s unnecessary? What isn’t the problem? What can you leave out? Omit? Subtract? Delete?


• How can this be done better and more cheaply? Streamline?


• What if you understate? • Can you separate your sales procedures into differ- ent parts?


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