Let’s look at the concept of a trend. Often, a trend is understood as something fashionable, relevant, something that the market needs a lot and on which you can make money. In reality, this is not the case. A trend is a kind of “mathematical function”, which is easy to calculate based on statistical data of the past period on the consumption of products and services in the world.
Let me explain with an example. When you first picked up a touchscreen phone without buttons, you voted with your choice, with your money, for the technology to keep developing in this direction. A trend is a certain vector that helps determine how consumer demand will change. There is a famous phrase: “The future already exists. You could say that it is already here, because now we are doing what we are doing.
Let’s look at examples of how identifying trends allows you to turn an existing product or service into an innovative one, to make it more marketable.
A U.S. airline company noticed that customers were less likely to buy business class tickets than they would like. To encourage the purchase of such tickets, it offered its passengers an interesting service: a conversation with a “mentor” during a flight in business class. In this case, the “mentors” are some famous people (businessmen, scientists, etc.), with whom under normal circumstances, passengers would be unlikely to talk.
The airline’s website, the client chooses the person he is interested in. Let’s say he wants to talk to Bill Gates, and he is going to fly to Thailand, for example, which means that he will be on the plane for eight or nine hours. Accordingly, you can spend all that time talking to him.
Of course, there is a selection system when you buy a ticket on the website, and, of course, communication with the passenger is by consent of the “mentor.” Nevertheless, such an additional service – training during the flight – allowed the company to significantly increase passenger loyalty and traffic.
The second example from the field of sports, its “hero” is a company that manufactures helmets for players of American soccer. It is a very traumatic sport, and many sports clubs lose quite a lot of money because of brain injuries suffered by players. How serious such an injury is cannot be determined right away. Often players don’t see a doctor until three or four days after an injury occurs, when the situation is already very serious, and therefore the club has to pay their insurance and sick pay.
The company in question decided to use wearable technology in the production of helmets (by wearable we mean technology used in gadgets – jabons, bracelets, fitness trackers, i.e. devices that can be carried around). A sensor system is built inside the helmet that signals to medics on impact how hard the player has been hit. This lets them know right away if the player can be left on the field or if he needs to be hospitalized. This innovation has reduced the cost of insurance and other medical costs by about three to four times. Through its use, an ordinary helmet has become a high-tech product that solves a client’s problem.
There are many more such examples, but it’s time to talk about the mechanics of sales management by defining the future.
