The humor newspaper The Onion ran this front page headline: “Things Taking Entirely Too Long”. The accompanying photo showed a man staring at a microwave oven. Two minutes is the new Eternity. People will put up with government gridlock, romantic betrayal and even cucumbers being put in their drinking water, but they will simply not tolerate having their time wasted. This all points to the big opportunity to distinguish yourself by saving your customers time.
The post “How to Spark Innovative Thinking” talked about many innovation directions. Saving customers time is an exceptionally rich innovation strategy. Not only do customers value it but your sales people will love having a quantifiable personal benefit to offer. Have you thought of how you can do this? Here is a three-step process for finding the most innovative and profitable ideas.