Nice idea, but what’s in it for us?

I took this photo while shopping at Australian supermarket giant Coles yesterday.

I’ll start by saying not returning supermarket trolleys, or worse stealing them is not cool. It probably adds some cost to our grocery bills, albeit small.

But when I saw this poster up in my local Coles, I tweeted it and made the comment that it was reasonably amusing. Then Cameron Reilly, made what I thought was an insightful comment from a marketing perspective:

then I responded with this….

and Cameron finished it off with this 140 characters…

Which to be honest is probably the sentiments of most of Coles’ customers.

I’ll say it again – ‘Incentives shape behaviour’ – on this occasion there is no incentive for customers to care. How hard would it be for Coles to offer a shopping voucher for lost trolley returns? Or some other small incentive? In fact, it’s an insult to their customers to ask for help in a such a one sided manner. It’s very 1970’s marketing.

Startup blog says: respect your customers and reward the right behaviour.

The best business phrase ever – update

Incentives shape behaviour.

It’s true of all people, at all times. It’s deeply coded in our DNA, and unlikely to change anytime soon.here’s some thought starters on the depth of the phrase.

Incentives: are not necessarily monetary, rather ideas which will improve the perceived situation of the decision maker.

Shape: for things to be shaped it takes time, they must be moulded, caressed, developed and iterated.

Behaviour: is action related. It is about what people do, not what they think about or like, it’s about motion.

Whenever I make a decision as a marketer and an entrepreneur I think deeply about these 3 words.

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Incentives

One of my favourite business phrases is this:

Incentives shape behaviour.

Incentives shape the behaviour of all the people involved in our business value chain. And these incentives we create are also holistic in the sense that they go well beyond money. But before we go designing some kind of incentive program, we are better off thinking about what’s in it for all the people involved. People including but not limited to:

Our Employees

Our Shareholders

Our Suppliers

Our Retailers

Our Customers

Our Community

Our Government

Let’s focus for a few moments on our suppliers. Our usual predisposition here with suppliers is to get the best deal possible. The cheapest supply price. To negotiate hard. And if we do this we’ll make more profit. The flip side of course is that our supplier makes less profit. Maybe we’ll be one of their least profitable customers? In this case what kind of service are we going to get? How will they help us if things are urgent? Will they be as reliable as we need them to be? What will they tell the industry about us as a customer of theirs? In fact negotiating the best deal may just give us a disadvantage which is greater than the price benefits. It’s not such a great incentive for our suppliers and may lead to breakages in our business value chain. It’s smart to leave something in it for the other guy.

As Startups we should ask ourselves the following question….

Are we creating a system in which the people above will have an incentive to help us succeed, or will they simply be indifferent?

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