Category: What’s New

The food an average American family wastes translates into about $2,500 per year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), beef is one of the least wasted foods, with only 20% spoiled or not eaten. If beef waste were cut in half, the sustainability of the whole industry could be improved by 10%.

Not only is beef delicious and nutritious, but the beef industry continues to implement numerous proven sustainability practices throughout each step of the “pasture-to-plate” process. Though the path to sustainability is never complete, it is a continuous journey.

To the beef community, sustainability comprises much more than environmental considerations. Today, a sustainable food supply balances efficient production with environmental, social and economic impacts.

BioZyme’s Gain Smart ® line was developed for stockers to help them enhance what they do best; turn grass into the beef we all love to eat. Throughout the beef cycle, each sector makes efforts to improve sustainability. Stockers are no exception. So please help us by helping them and remember to include Gain Smart in your conversations with those raising sustainable beef.

A sustainable beef herd is like a sustainable company – one whose purpose and actions are equally grounded in financial, environmental and social concerns. I am not very experienced in beef sustainability but in a company, I feel like I can offer a few ideas. Below you will find five ways to help you shape a more sustainable future for your company.

1. Do not stand still, embrace change When you change and act fast, you can be the biggest, boldest and brightest unicorn, but if you remain still and don’t change and adapt to a situation quickly, you are closer to extinction than sustainability.

For instance, in the 80s, IBM got close to extinction. In fact, they were featured on the Forbes and Fortune magazine covers along with dinosaurs. So, the idea is there’s no standing still, or you will petrify just like the dinosaur. One may have a great idea that works, but it doesn’t matter how big the idea is, if you can’t find ways to take it to the market quickly you aren’t driving sustainability.

2. Focus on creating the customer’s value proposition, not yours Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day the business purpose is to drive value for the customer. Focus on creating high value, high capabilities that are useful for your customer base. This doesn’t mean that you need to be an expert at everything; it’s about creating value on the top end with existing resources.

3. Remember growth and comfort don’t co-exist We are no longer in the 50s, 60s, and 70s era. For example, if you are a banker, your new competitors are completely different. If you are in retail, now everybody is a retailer. Similarly, if you have been in the mobile business, then you can see that it’s no longer an industry; it’s a platform, it’s a capability. This is uncomfortable. But growth comes from businesses that focus on delivering value in innovative ways for their customers, even when it is uncomfortable.

4. Focus on excelling in an area It’s no longer about one company delivering value to every client at every place; it’s about being a part of an ecosystem. If you are not part of the ecosystem, then you are limiting yourself. You might have a successful start, but eventually it starts becoming difficult. Further in the bigger ecosystem, you are going to become a part of many ecosystems. In some, you might be a significant player and in others, you might be a small player. But in the end, it’s all about the contributions you are making in each of those ecosystems. So don’t try to be a big player in every ecosystem, rather look at how things work to drive incremental value in your ecosystem.
   
5. Focus on constant reinvention When you are part of a company, then it’s all about constantly reinventing what you do, it’s about reimaging how you do it and at the same time retaining your above core belief system because you want your employees, your clients, and your partners to work with you and for you.

Sustainability – believe you can make a difference and keep pushing.

Diversification is a key component of a long-lived, healthy business. Diversification is the process of a business enlarging or varying its range of products or field of operation. Personally, I don’t think of diversification as a process, I think of it as a conscious decision to prosper. Diversification is a proactive growth strategy. Adding new products and services to your business can gain you entry to an attractive new industry full of new customers and high sales potential. It can also kick-start growth again with your current customers.

At BioZyme®, sales diversification is one of our five corporate goals. As a high growth, innovative company not diversifying is not really an option for us. Of course, the tricky part is determining where and how to diversify. Adding the small ruminant brand wasn’t all that tricky, but it has been a pretty easy way to accomplish diversification.

It all started with end-users asking why their sheep and goats could not get the Concept•Aid® line like cattle people could. Being taught by Dr. Francis Fluharty that sheep and goats are not the same and that they are way different than a cow, I wanted us to create products for each of these small ruminants instead of a one-line-fits-all approach. While the population numbers make you think you would put them together, my educator taught me to realize that would not be best for the animal. As an animal lover, having both sheep and goat products in the DuraFerm line became the only way to go for me.

The population of sheep and goats in the U.S. has been stable over the last few years at around 8M head. This is just about the same number as the population of dairy cows and horses. In all cases, we should be focused on a targeted sales approach with salespeople that have time to focus on the diversification, a specific marketing strategy for the diversification effort and a thorough follow-up effort on both to keep the pipeline funnel moving correctly.

At the risk of being long winded, I can’t pass up the opportunity to expand on how diversification brings up the importance of knowing your customers’ demands. To deliver value to your customers, you must have a clear understanding of their needs. This doesn’t change if they are a sheep, goat, dog or horse customer. However, it is probably more important to acknowledge it as a business owner when one is trying to diversify.

A customer need is a problem that a person is trying to solve, which motivates them to seek a product or service to do so. Another way to understand customer needs is to think of them as jobs to be done. The jobs to be done (JTBD) theory was first introduced by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. In the online course Disruptive Strategy, Christensen asserts that customers don’t really buy products; they “hire” them to get a “job” done. In Disruptive Strategy, a JTBD is defined as “a circumstances-based description of understanding your customers’ desires, competitive set, anxieties, habits and timeline of purchase.”

Based on this definition, customers hire a product or service based on how well it fits their job description. If you understand the jobs your customers are hiring your product or service for, you can create a winning value proposition and drive innovation within your organization.

By aligning your company with JTBD, you can tailor your offerings to deliver value to your customers, achieve differentiation in the market, and avoid disruption. There are a number of ways to learn about your customers’ jobs to be done. Here are three ways to develop an understanding of your customers’ needs to better serve them with your products and services.

1. Reflect on Your Experiences
   The first method for identifying jobs to be done is to reflect on your own behaviors and experiences, identifying patterns in your decision-making process. You yourself are a customer and, in the absence of other data sources, self-reflection can be a helpful starting point.
   • What motivated me to make the purchase?
   • What other options were available to me?
   • Why did I choose this product over the other options available?
   • What goal did the product help me achieve?
2. Observe Behaviors Around You
   In addition to reflecting on your own experiences, you should observe the behaviors of those around you. If possible, look for opportunities to observe people at each stage of the buying process—from the time the job to be done arises to the final decision. Observe how people use the product or service to understand what goals it helps them achieve or challenges it helps them avoid. Look out for compensating behaviors or actions people take when a product or service doesn’t exist to fulfill their needs. Understanding the JTBD at the core of inconvenient alternatives can help you identify an underserved need in the market and inspire ideas to satisfy it.
3. Order some DuraFerm
   Force yourself to diversify and figure out how to get the job done!

I believe that a profitable, fun business needs to be kept simple and can be easily described with a triangle. How?

At the very top of the triangle and business must be its goals. Goals should not be plentiful, nor too complex. These goals must be supported with strategies that are so important that without their completion, the goals won’t be met. And then finally, these strategies must have amazing, defined tactics behind them, to ensure they are accomplished.

The triangle must be supported with investment and structure, as a well thought out set of business goals, strategies and tactics can only be completely successful if they have these behind them. Without all these features, a business will not be able to maximize its growth potential, since we need to make plans for the future to create opportunities, rather than simply wait for new business. Without an organizational structure that puts key employees together on a regular basis, it will be difficult to create effective strategies and impossible to hit the related goals.

Strategic management includes creating growth through introducing new products, using new distribution channels, expanding geographically or going after a new target market. These strategies give the path needed, while the tactics are much more concrete and are often oriented toward smaller steps and a shorter time frame. In other pages of this month’s VISION we talk about a variety of strategies and tactics to position products and hopefully help sell the BioZyme products.

Business is not simple, but it does not have to be complex either. Remember a triangle is the simplest form of a polygon and “It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.” – Amelia Barr