Eureka! A System Worth Following
Eureka! Winning Ways helps companies find and develop marketing opportunities.
Every business faces a time when executives and managers need to step back from the all-consuming challenges of day-to-day operations and begin thinking about future growth. Yet many companies have a hard time finding a process they can follow that will yield insights and, eventually, measurable results.
Designed by well known entrepreneur and Eureka! Ranch founder, Doug Hall, Eureka! Winning Ways offers a systemic approach which results in potential sales in just a few months. Minnesota Technology, Inc. (MTI) leased Eureka! Winning Ways last year and has seen it successfully employed at three companies.
But let’s first talk about the approach. Grounded in hard data and proven strategies, the process helps companies identify new product and marketing growth opportunities. MTI applies Eureka! Winning Ways by gathering together executives, key managers and chief executive officers for a day-long event where they generate ideas and establish growth targets.
Eureka! Winning Ways requires the team to arrive at around 50 ideas for new products, markets and sales strategies.
In what’s called the “Trailblazer” process, those 50 ideas are cut to four finalists. Those four concepts are sent to three outside evaluators, who measure them against 50 success factors established by Merwyn Research, part of Eureka! Ranch. The database’s criteria offers a measurement of success probability based on the experience of other businesses.
A final report ranks the strategies and suggests advice on their execution. Eureka! Winning Ways claims Merwyn has an 86 percent reliability record in predicting sales success. We like the process because it offers managers and executives a clear vision and roadmap for growth, eliminates dead ends and focuses management on the strongest options.
CEOs like the program because it takes the burden off of them to come up with new products and services—their staffs often suggest great ideas. And company employees like the process because no one really owns the final ideas— they tend to morph into one another, with shared authorship.
So how has it worked? Consider the following MTI clients who have used it.
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CARDSource, a plastic card manufacturer based in Eagan, employed two ideas. One involves using its sales and service staff to assist smaller clients with limited budgets in setting up loyalty programs. CARDSource projects $700,000 in new revenue from the program in 2008. A second idea is a branded card product focused on a niche market—sales could be $600,000 annually.
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Harmony-based Harmony Enterprises, a manufacturer of equipment for waste management and recycling companies, is working on developing a line of solar-powered products and a new baling system product with a tie-off mechanism now only available on larger units. The solar concept could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the baler may add 25 percent to sales this year.
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Whirltronics, a Buffalo manufacturer of rotary lawnmower blades, is developing a process of treating their blades for longer life and to stamp parts that need heattreating treatment. The value-added service could open a new market for the company.
Eureka! Winning Ways also focuses on refining marketing messages to improve sales. But the majority of the program is about generating new products for new and existing markets. It forces teams to think beyond the box, to get creative, to consider new products that will grow their companies in the future. All our clients had an additional message: Eureka! Winning Ways was a lot of fun.
John Connelly is MTI’s director of product management.