Credited by Philip Kotler with popularizing the term “relationship marketing,” Bund specializes in marketing strategy, as a consultant and as a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. She has been an independent consultant since 1987 and has taught at MIT since 1991. Previously, she spent three years at the consulting firm Index Systems (where she was a Vice President) and 11 years as a professor at Harvard Business School. She holds an AB from Radcliffe College and a PhD from Harvard University. She has published numerous articles and eight books. In addition to The Outside-in Corporation, her best-known publications are “Build Customer Relationships that Last” (Harvard Business Review) and Winning and Keeping Industrial Customers.
What Barbara Bund provides in this book can be of substantial value to decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) which has an urgent need to achieve “breakthrough results” by gaining a much better understanding of–and then becoming much closer to–those of greatest importance to its success. Thus, healthcare providers would think in terms of becoming patient-centric, trade and professional associations (e.g. chambers of commerce) would think in terms of becoming member-centric, etc. As she explains in the Preface, “The primary objective of this book is to help business managers use [her various] insights effectively in practice. It is to share the outside-in discipline–to provide a road map for managers to follow in creating and leading outside-in corporations, even in organizations where the unfortunate inside-out perspective has prevailed in the past.” She carefully organizes her material within 13 chapters which begin with a probing analysis of “the bad habit of inside-out thinking” and conclude with a summation of “the bad news and the good news” followed by provision of four additional “outside-in tools” and then a recommended process to establish and then sustain an “outside-in discipline.” Bund provides recommended “Outside-In Actions” at the end of each chapter. These sections reiterate key points, of course, but they can also serve as invaluable self-audits if completed with appropriate rigor and (yes) candor.
Here is a representative excerpt which, although taken out of context, suggests the high quality of Bund’s thinking and writing: “Even if customers are able to articulate their product needs, it’s important to be clear about just what they mean, especially when they use some key words that can have a variety of significantly different meanings. A short initial list is quality and service. It is essential to explore what [such] terms mean to particular customers in specific situations.” (Page 68) She makes two important points. First, many customers cannot articulate their product needs but can at least provide a “wish list” of preferences, frustrations, unmet needs, etc., and will do so, but only when asked. Secondly, Warren Buffett is reported to have suggested something to the effect that price is what you charge but value is what others think it is worth. Hence the importance, Bund insists, of having customers define the given terms so that an appropriate response can be formulated.
In this volume, Bund cites a number of exemplary organizations (e.g. Costco, Dell, eBay, FedEx, and GE) that “have an explicit customer-based reason for everything [they] do in the marketplace.” Guided and informed by the outside-in discipline, they have better strategy design, better communication of strategy to others, and better ability to adapt when there are changes in the competitive marketplace. They have achieved breakthrough results because they understand, really understand why their customers are “the key”, and treat them accordingly.
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