How to create a high-quality product that customers will rush to buy?
What kind of products are considered high-quality products that customers are eager to pay for? They must be products and services that touch the hearts of customers and meet their deep-seated needs.
Not long ago, Steve Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of the global analog business unit of TI (Texas Instruments), came to China and met with a number of mainstream media. In his speech, Steve shared the concept of TI products and services and how TI meets the deep-seated needs of customers.
Figure 1. Steve Anderson’s wonderful speech
When talking about needs, we think of the most well-known Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory by the famous American social psychologist Maslow. Today, we will take this as the main line and combine it with Steve's speech to explain to you how to create a high-quality product that customers will rush to pay for.
Figure 2. Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory
Physiological needs – the basic needs of an enterprise
Steve introduced: "Analog interface is actually an important interface connecting the digital world and the physical world (as shown in Figure 3). Our main business is to produce important interfaces that connect the world. More than 86% of TI's revenue in 2015 came from the business units of analog and embedded processor products."
Figure 3. Classic system architecture diagram of the simulation industry
Therefore, we can see that TI provides analog technology and products to corporate customers, meeting their basic needs - "physiological needs". These products are like a key that opens the lock that corporate customers want to open. At the same time, TI has also expanded this part of the "physiological needs" of customers into its main operating income - 86% of TI's operating income comes from analog and embedded processing businesses.
Security requirements - enterprise security requirements
"The technology provided by TI can meet the standards of reliability, high precision, safety, and energy saving," said Steve. "When we communicate with customers, the basic point they particularly emphasize is to be able to ensure very high reliability at the system level. In other words, in addition to high reliability at the product level, when the product is placed in the entire system, the system can also maintain high reliability. This is particularly important in the final equipment production link. It is difficult to imagine a car production line factory stopping production due to system reliability problems."
Figure 4. Product and system level reliability
In fact, if you only meet basic "physiological needs", only a small number of customers will become your users, and the "safety" of your products and services is a necessary condition for most customers to pay for them.
Social needs - differentiated emotional needs of corporate customers
In his speech, Steve shared some of TI’s experiences on “differentiated emotional needs of enterprise customers”:
TI has a very broad product portfolio: analog products, embedded processing technology and connectivity technology are all included. No other company in the industry can make progress in three business areas like TI, which reflects the breadth of TI's product portfolio.
Process stability and consistency: TI uses a multi-source manufacturing approach in manufacturing, which means that TI's production is completed in its own factories with unified process technology. At the same time, because there are different sources, TI can ensure the stability and consistency of the process. For example, if a factory encounters a natural disaster, its production task can be transferred to another factory, so that TI can ensure stability and consistency in supply.
Innovation leads to progress: In the future, you can see TI's continued innovation in analog technology, because we are increasing our investment in this field. In 2015, TI's R&D expenditure was close to $1 billion, and TI launched about 350 new analog products.
Figure 5. TI continues to expand R&D investment, and innovation leads to progress
Meeting the differentiated needs of corporate customers is based on the company's continuous pursuit of products and services. "A three-foot-thick ice does not form overnight," and the creation of excellent products is hidden in decades of daily polishing.
Respect needs - the need for a sense of belonging among corporate customers
How to meet the "needs of corporate customers for a sense of belonging"? "TI not only has a rich product portfolio, advanced manufacturing technology, and packaging technology, but more importantly, we also need to support customers in effectively using our advanced technology." Steve pointed out and gave a detailed explanation of four aspects:
TI not only provides specific products for customers' production, but also provides customers with some beneficial learning materials, such as technical white papers, to help them learn and understand this new technology.
TI can provide them with some of the best tools in the industry, such as the WEBENCH design tool. Customers can use WEBENCH to create their own power supply related designs. Regarding TI Designs, TI now has nearly 1,500 power supply reference designs available to customers.
Another important point is to make full use of the advantages of the Internet and technology to provide support to customers. TI has an online community for questions and answers. The US version is the E2E community, and the Chinese version is the TI Online Technical Support Community, which is a technical forum. In this forum, people who need to ask questions will post their questions. These questions are monitored by some key technical engineers of TI at any time, and they can give answers very promptly.
Regarding the last question about providing support to customers, which Steve thinks is the most important part, TI has a team to support sales and applications. It is the industry's largest engineering and technical support team for sales and applications. They are distributed in various countries, including TI in Shenzhen. There is such a team all over the world, wherever there are TI customers, there are such teams. They are very close to customers physically and can speak the same language.
Figure 6. TI Designs officially provides 1,500 reference designs
The sense of belonging of corporate customers is just like the “consumption upgrade” that is mentioned repeatedly. The advantages of the product itself can no longer attract customers to pay for a long time. Your products and services must understand “his” heart better.
Self-realization: How TI achieves customer success
Self-realization, for TI, is more about how to achieve customer success. In this regard, Steve also has three insights:
1. TI is a strong backer for corporate customers and start-ups: TI has a very rich sales and support staff in the local area. Our competitors cannot be compared with TI in terms of sales and service personnel matching resources. TI can provide some innovative companies and start-ups with strong engineering technology guarantees. In addition to door-to-door visits, we also have an excellent online experience, and users can obtain very rich resources. It is precisely because of the above that TI can truly and effectively help and inspire our customers to realize their innovative dreams and really provide them with the tools they need to succeed;
2. Strong cost control: TI is not only an industry-leading company with strong innovation capabilities, but also a solution provider that is of great significance to customers with a strong sense of cost control;
3. Layout of education and training: TI has very good cooperation projects and plans with Chinese universities, including specialized laboratories, technology centers, design competitions, etc., to provide training for Chinese teachers in related fields. TI also actively participates in various local social and community activities, including education and training, as well as volunteer activities.
Figure 7. TI continues to provide local and global resource support to Chinese customers
TI tells you with facts: achieving success for others is equal to achieving success for yourself.
Figure 8. TI's 2015 operating revenues totaled $13 billion
Figure 9. TI has more than 100,000 enterprise customers
To sum up, only products and services that directly touch the hearts of customers and deeply satisfy their "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory" can become a high-quality product that customers will compete to pay for!
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