Can Ginni Rometty Help Grow Your Business?

Do cognitive technologies change the way you grow your business? How can entrepreneurs grow smarter businesses by leveraging cognitive technologies to grow to the next level? I’m at The World of Watson conference this week learning about how cognitive technologies can help you grow a more profitable business. One of the highlights of this week is that Ginni Rometty is going to share how she sees cognitive technologies transforming our world.

I’ve worked in advanced technologies for over 25 years, this year. This is the first time I will see IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty speak live. I’ve researched her background and read many of her presentations from the past several years to see how she is transforming IBM with her vision, people and strategy.

I’ll dispense with the hype to share what areas I believe will be most impacted by these emerging technologies immediately. From what I’ve read of Ginni Rometty in the past, I would consider her a transformational leader with the ability to get things done. Next week, I’ll return to share what I hear from her. We will focus on the basics here today and then go into greater depth on how it works on future blogs.

There are three keys ways to grow a business. It doesn’t matter what business you are in, but miss one of these three key growth strategies and you are leaving money and profits on the table. Today, we focus on the marketing fundamentals. In the case of cognitive technologies, I think there are additional capabilities that will be required in this fast changing market.

The first way you can grow your business faster is to increase the number of clients you have. Ginni Rometty understands it is no longer just the number of clients you have, but who your best clients and customers are. It the past, your role in business was to get as many customers as you can, as quickly as you can. Today, cognitive technology allows you to see all your customers at the same time. It allows you to know who are the most profitable and why. It helps you select which customers you should continue working with and those you might want to stop selling to.

This allows leaders to quickly understand what is happening in their own business. I’ve just started running some tests, but it’s amazing how much usable information you can acquire about your own organization’s costs and operations. If you would like to learn more about these Financial Planning and Analysis tools, click here.

The second way you can grow your business faster is to increase the average dollars per sale. Now you might think this is easy if you’re a smaller organization, but when you get over $50,000,000 in sales, it get very hard, very quickly. How much is your average customer worth? How much profit do they generate?  Which customers could buy more of your products and services given the right possibilities?

Ginni Rometty and her teams are working to make this information available to entrepreneurs in real time. Can you imagine how powerful your sales and marketing can become when you know who you should be selling and marketing to? As importantly, in today’s markets with declining margins, it will be critical to invest your resources in the right places in the right way at the best time. This is one of the key benefits of leveraging cognitive technologies.

The final way to grow your business faster is to increase the repurchasing frequency. Ginni Rometty is helping clients know when and how to approach clients at the best times. Cognitive technologies are very expensive reminder vehicles. That is until you realize how many times you lose sales and potential profits because someone forgot to reach out to a good customer for a reorder. Even worse, when you lose that customer to a competitor. Wouldn’t it be great to assign a more junior team member who loves working with clients to help cultivate your best clients? How much time do your sales people spend with clients who aren’t ready to buy? In many cases, you can use supply chain technologies to allow clients to order automatically.

Nothing new here until you give it all a cognitive twist. What if you can use these technologies to increase interdependence throughout the digital supply chain? What if they could help you lock out your global competition?

That opens the discussion to a different relationship with your best suppliers and partners. This is where I believe Ginni Rometty is changing the way we do business. Cognitive technologies help you change the way you interact with your customer and, ultimately, in many cases, their customer.  Have I gotten your attention yet?

Next week, I’ll be back, ready to share what I hear from Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM.  This is what I’m hoping to hear from her keynote. See you next week!