with a vigorous marketing campaign
designed to try to make the existing
breakfast products appealing to Quebec and ultimately failing, an outside
consultant suggested simply asking
Quebecers what they wanted. Focus
groups revealed the problem lay with
the way the eggs were cooked and the
thickness of the toast, and McDonald’s
was successful in solving that quickly
and bringing sales in Quebec up to
match the rest of the country.
The point to take home is that your
own beliefs about a product can make
you assume that everyone shares the
same sentiments. Before you go to the
market, make sure there are customers
out there who want what you have to
offer. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a
multi-million dollar company or a small
start-up with just a few employees.
Bringing brand name business leaders on board to talk about failure helps
Godse bring credibility to the book and
make it more attractive than just picking
up a book by some guy from London,
Ontario with an MBA from Ivey and a
collection of stories. It also shows that
failure can be a reality for even the
most successful companies and it’s all
about how prepared you are to deal
with it and how well you can bounce
back from it.
Whether you’re at the start-up stage
or already running a business and looking to make changes such as expansion or introducing a new product,
“Fail Fast, Succeed Faster” can help
guide you through the process and
evaluate your chances of success by
employing a simple strategy and illustrating scenarios where other people
failed to consider all the variables and
the real consequences of that.
“People have lost their savings, people have gone bankrupt - a 20 year
family business in the steel industry
down in flames in four months because
they hired the wrong guy - here is a
guy who is CEO of a $1.3 million steel
company who wants to save money on
a guy who cooked the books,” says
Godse.
So there’s a sense of urgency to it.
Thousands of businesses enter and exit
the Canadian market every year. A
2012 report by CIBC using data from
Statistics Canada revealed a sharp rise
in the number of Canadians starting
their own businesses, and this propor14
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tion is expected to rise
even further. The reality is
that many of these businesses
will ultimately fail, and by some economists’ predictions, will be out of business within the first five years.
Godse doesn’t claim that his book can
turn a product or service into a winning product or service. What it can
do is prevent total failure or cushion the
blow by ultimately asking the question,
“Should I be continuing this?” If you
don’t ask first, there’s a lot to lose