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Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs | 
 enlarge | Authors: Craig Stull, Phil Myers, David Meerman Scott
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy Used: $13.02
You Save: $14.93 (53%)
New (41) Used (14) from $13.02
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 5397
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 047026036X
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.409
EAN: 9780470260364
ASIN: 047026036X
Publication Date: June 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Pages in very good condition with exception of light edge wear. Dust jacket shows wear. Great book at a great price!!!
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Product Description
If you market a product, service, or idea in any business, industry or organization, you must read Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs, a guide to understanding and meeting the needs of consumers, whether or not they make those needs clear. An easy-to-follow six-step process developed over the past 15 years can help you address unsolved problems, recognize buyer personas, quantify impact and create breakthrough experiences. Stop wasting time by guessing what your market needs and start understanding consumer desire.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
The return of common sense marketing June 20, 2008
Brad Shorr (Geneva, IL USA)
17 out of 21 found this review helpful
Why did the Apple Newton flop and the iPod rock? How did a struggling magician transform himself into a success with a three-word tagline? How did a car rental startup grab an entire market segment that was just sitting there for the big guys to gobble up? Answer: it was all a matter of tuning in.
It stands to reason if an organization wants to develop products and services that resonate with people, the first step is to ask people what they want. Simple as it sounds, authors Stull, Myers, and Scott, each of whom has extensive experience working with large firms and non-profits, observe that many of them simply don't do it. Those that do often lack the right processes to gather and act upon the information they receive. As a result, they roll out products and services that fall absolutely flat, squandering their resources and completely missing golden opportunities.
The authors contend the solution is to tune in. Instead of selecting new product initiatives in ivory tower executive suites and developing them in the lab, get to the grass roots. Talk to actual people, uncover their most urgent needs, and craft solutions. This strikes me as an incredibly sensible approach; perhaps that is why big companies are apt to overlook it.
The book focuses on the why and how of tuning in, with emphasis on the how. The authors lay out a 6-step process for tuning in, very detailed yet written in plain English every reader will understand -
1. Find unresolved problems
2. Understand buyer personas
3. Quantify the impact
4. Create breakthrough experiences
5. Articulate powerful ideas
6. Establish authentic connections
Even though it is simple and straightforward, the tuning in process, like any other, has its share of pitfalls, problems, and subtleties. Here's where the authors' impressive consulting and training experience really distinguishes this book from others I've read on similar topics. These men are able to identify the hazards organizations will encounter in the trenches, and explain - largely through the use of real life case studies and their own war stories - how to handle (and not handle) them.
I like the emphasis on real life stories. They give the whole book the flavor of authenticity books like this need. The procession of examples is what makes tuning in seem implementable, rather than being just another cool-sounding new marketing theory.
Any organizational leader, marketing specialist, or sales executive will profit from, and probably be challenged by, "Tuned In", since tuning in involves jettisoning conventional wisdom (for instance, making new product decisions based strictly on what current customers say), and engaging in new forms of communication such as blogs and social networking communities. Still, this is one of those books you're better off reading sooner rather than later. As more and more companies start tuning in, those that don't are going to start looking worse and worse in the marketplace.
The power of paying attention June 26, 2008
Julie Neal (Sanibel Island, Fla.)
34 out of 35 found this review helpful
What a thoughtful and helpful book! It explores the concept of creating a product or service that resonates with buyers; that, in essence, sells itself. By getting closer to your customers you'll be able to know what they want, and then offer it to them. By paying attention, you'll be successful.
The authors use real-life examples throughout the book to explain the six-step Tuning In process. This helps turn vague-sounding theory into something you can actually use. For example, Step 2 in the Tuning In process is "Understand Buyer Personas." This involves breaking buyers into distinct groups, and finding out, in detail, the things that are important for each group. The authors used the 2004 presidential election as an example. Operatives for the two candidates divided voters into groups such as NASCAR Dads and Security Moms, and targeted their individual campaign messages directly to each group. This was much more effective than using a scatter-shop approach to broadcast a generic message to anyone and everyone.
One idea that makes sense to me is the idea of creating an "elevator speech" for your product or service. It's the short answer you'd give if someone asked what your product is in an elevator, and you had to answer before the ride is over. Since you only have time to say about 25 words, they should be the distillation of your product from the buyer's point of view. There is no time for, as the book puts it, "egocentric corporate gobbledygook."
I found quite a few ideas of this caliber I'll put into use. For any businessperson, the book is well worth buying.
Here's the chapter list:
1. Why Didn't We Think of That?
2. Tuned Out... and Just Guessing
3. Get Tuned In
4. Step 1: Find Unresolved Problems
5. Step 2: Understand Buyer Personas
6. Step 3: Quantify the Impact
7. Step 4: Create Breakthrough Experiences
8. Step 5: Articulate Powerful Ideas
9. Step 6: Establish Authentic Connections
10. Cultivate a Tuned In Culture
11. Unleash Your Resonator
Get Tuned In or You will be turned out July 12, 2008
John Chancellor (New Orleans)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Interruption marketing (most mass media advertising) is becoming more expensive and reaching fewer people that care. And if you compound the problem by creating a product that you are trying to sell rather than creating one that is "Tuned In" to your market, you have compounded the problem.
When creating a product or service, most businesses make these common mistakes: They assume that the company insiders know more than the buyers about what the buyers want/need. They based their market research on their current customer base - thus eliminating a much larger potnetial market share of potential customers. And they try to create a need - the tell their customers what to buy rather than providing what the customers want.
To be successful in today's highly competitve marketplace, you need a breakthrough product that resonates with your customers so that they immediately understand the benefit to them and are eager to buy the product. This only happens if you are totally Tuned In to the customer's wants/needs.
"The Tuned In company constantly listens to, observes and understands the problems the buyers are willing to pay money to solve." for the most part, Tuned In companies ignore the competition - listening instead to the customers.
Too many companies get caught up in their own egos. They think they know what the customer wants. Most innovation-driven companies listen only to themselves - they obsess about who will get credit for the next innovation or the most unique invention. And all too often the newest innovation does not solve a problem for the customer, so they simply do not care.
If you are going to be successful, your product or service must resonate with your target market. And resonators are in the market - not in your head. A product or service that resonates with the market will sell itself. You do not need to push the product. Customers will seek out your product or service.
One of the most powerful (but probably difficult concepts to come to grips with) statements is "Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant." The only thing that matters is the buyer's opinion.
There are six steps to becoming a Tuned In company.
Step one - Find unresolved problems.
Step two - Understand the buyer persona. Who is the buyer, what are their problems, what moves them to take action.
Step three - Quantify the impact. You must determine that the problem you are solving is urgent, pervasive and the buyer is willing to spend money to solve the problem.
Step four - Create a breakthrough experience - the most successful companies understand that the customer buys a total experience - one that resonates.
Step five - Articulate a powerful idea. Your message must focus on the problem it is solving and must be immediately understood by the buyer.
Step six - Establish authentic Connections - you must understand and focus on the buyer. The buyer must feel like you really understand and care about them and their problems.
It is no longer possible to push product by using mass advertising. Buyers are more concerned about their problems and getting them solved. They no longer wait for a solution to come to them. They are actively looking for solutions to their problems. If you are going to be successful, you must understand their problems and be Tuned In to the buyer.
The book is well written and give plenty of examples of Tuned In companies such as: Zipcar, iPod, National Community Church and the new Dutch Boy paint containers.
It is very important to understand that to be successful today that you must take a different approach than has worked in the past. Buyers have many more choices. Markets are fragmented. And interruption marketing no longer has the impact it once did. You cannot focus on your product. You must focus on the problems your product solves for the buyer.
It is easy to believe that being Tuned In does not apply to your business. It is also very easy to fail. This is a very important concept and a very easy to understand gateway to what it takes to market successfully in a world that changed the way buyers respond.
You don't have to get Tuned In, but if you don't the chances are very high you will be tuned out by your cusomters.
It's all about "connections" September 4, 2008
Marion E. Gold (Chicago, IL USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This straight-talking book is a great addition to any entrepreneur's bookshelf. When positioning a company or a product - or a candidate for public office, there are several rules to follow, among them: Who is your customer? What is important to your customer? And how does your service or product meet the "perceived" needs of your customer? The key words are "perceived needs." You must know what your customer is buying and why, and what they want to buy. You also need to know what they are not buying - and why. It's all about establishing authentic connections, or as Myers, Stull and Scott say, how we tell our buyer that we've solved their problems - so that they listen to what we have to say, buy our products or services, or vote for us. (The reviewer is author of two books:Personal Publicity Planner: A Guide to Marketing YOU and Top Cops: Profiles of Women in Command.)
Learn to Create a Product that Sells Itself June 21, 2008
Mike Volpe (Boston, MA USA)
10 out of 15 found this review helpful
** If you want to learn how to build a great product your customers will love, this is a book you should read. **
More and more, marketing and product management professionals are realizing that you cannot use advertising to sell mediocre products. This used to be the case - you could build something relatively average, and just buy lots of TV ads to convince people to buy your product. Well, today outbound, interruption-based marketing like TV ads and cold calls don't work. People just ignore them. To effectively grow your business today, you need to leverage inbound marketing, which means building a truly remarkable product, and then helping your customers to spread the ideas related to your product by word of mouth and online in blogs and social media. So... How do you build a really great product that customers want to talk about? Well, if you follow the process in this book you have a really good chance of doing just that.
Tuned In does a really good job of covering product management and product development best practices - especially the critical parts about really understanding your target market and uncovering those unmet needs that lie under the surface of what people are telling you. This is really critical to developing breakthrough or remarkable products, which is essential to being a successful business today.
One of the things I like best about this book is that the presentation of the concepts in done heavily through examples. Some business / marketing books are very theoretical and don't include any practical examples to illustrate the concepts, but this book uses lots of interesting examples throughout which makes it a lot easier to really understand the message.
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