Book Review: The New Market Leaders
Posted on October 16th, 2009 by Paul McArdle – No Comments.
Having read, and enjoyed, “The Discipline of Market Leaders” by Treacy and Wiersema many years ago, I was anticipating some more useful insights in his latest book.
1) Binary Review
However, I would have to admit to being underwhelmed with this one.
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “The New Market Leaders”by Fred Wiersema |
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Underwhelming |
| Full Disclosure – yes, that’s a tracked link to Amazon shown above.
We buy quite a large number of books on a wide range of topics, all relevant to our business in some way. If you did happen to purchase the book from Amazon, they’d throw a few shekels our way, which would help us to buy (and hence publish reviews of) even more books. Hence, Karma would return the benefits to you… |
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That’s not to say that the book was a total waste of time – just that, the time spent reading this book could be much more productively spent reading a number of other books written in the same manner – particularly “Good to Great” and “Built to Last”, and (as noted above) the author’s earlier work.
In the interests of providing you some value in this post, here’s a couple of observations I made from the book .
2) Method
The first 44 pages (a lot!) of the book are devoted to an explanation of the methodology used to identify the companies that the author determined to be “leaders”.
In a nutshell, he created two indices – sales growth (i.e. not profit) and market capitalisation growth. Plotting companies on a scatter plot on that basis revealed the “leaders” (in the upper-right quadrant).
In the end, I see that the method used for determining the “leaders” as somewhat inconsequential, as the real value in these types of books are the lessons that can be gleaned from the companies selected. In other words, it’s possible that we can learn from pretty much any company, at least in some way.
It is in the quality of these findings that I found this book disappointing.
3) Main Conclusion – there are 4 buying patterns
The following diagram was produced in the book to explain the buying patterns.
For each of these buying patterns, the author identified the companies (from his list of “leaders”) which focused on addressing the needs of a particular type of buyer.
Then, the author identified the common threads in the approaches taken by these companies. The chapter headings summed up the message:
(a) Entice the Searchers
These buyers are people who like making choices, and having loads of information – hence give them both.
(b) Reassure the Streamliners
Be dependable, routine, etc…
(c) Free up the Delegators
Choose for the customer – to the extent of allowing them to outsource their underlying challenge to you
(d) Team up with the collaborators
Become a customer’s trusted partner.
4) Other points
A few other points that I underlined in the process of reading:
(a) Market Leaders create a larger-than-life presence, to ensure that they aren’t missed (a bit like being remarkable).
(b) Market Leaders seek out customers who stretch their capabilities:
i. If you want to be a market leader, do business with companies who already are – because they will stretch you more than an “average” customer
ii. If you want to grow, provide services to those customers who are growing.
iii. However, not all demanding customers are a good match – their interests may just not be aligned.
c) Market Leaders “educate” their clients as to the full value of the service they provide.
(d) Market Leaders are bold in everything they do
Useful points, but not needing 250 pages!