Bragging Rights
A new Volkswagen Golf R, image from VW.COM
I read an article this morning on the BBC Top Gear site that listed the top speed of the 2024 Volkswagen Golf R as 167 mph. As a car guy, that made me a little giddy — that’s pretty fast! A Golf!
At the risk of sounding like I’m about to chase the kids off my lawn, I’ll admit to remembering the days where Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, and Corvettes struggled to break 140. The first car I bought new was a Golf (Mk2) and I recall that the magazines pegged its top speed around 100 or so. Mine had difficulty maintaining 60 in top gear up the long hill on Rt 2 heading out of Cambridge, MA on my commute home. But now there’s a Golf that will do 167. Amazing!
Thinking about that from a Product and Product Marketing perspective this morning, I had a few thoughts. First, it really cemented for me the notion that technology matters — a lot.
The reason a Golf R can go that fast today where my Golf could barely break 100 is simple: Computers! Today we have the computing power and sensor data needed to very carefully manage the combustion processes of car engines so that they can breathe deeply, run very cleanly, produce enormous amounts of power without blowing themselves up, and deliver decent fuel economy when driven rationally. The biggest reason the exotics of my youth weren’t all that fast by today’s standards is that they didn’t make much power. The engines couldn’t breathe like a modern engine, spewed pollutants, and often didn’t run well. The computers and software onboard today’s cars (both under the hood and in the cabin) are light years beyond what was available 35 years ago and have helped manufacturers deliver far better products. No exageration: those old exotic engines are matched or outclassed by the four cylinder engines found in today’s better small sedans and SUVs. These modern engines don’t sound great by comparison, but they certainly deliver.
Incredible progress has also been made with the tools used to engineer and build those products. The CAD, simulation, and data management systems in use today allow engineers to design parts, assemblies, and systems that were barely conceivable 35 years ago. And today those designs can actually be built because the sophistication of computer-controlled manufacturing equipment has also improved radically. As a result today’s cars are sleeker, more powerful, more sophisticated, safer, more reliable, and vastly more usable than their predecessors, without being much more expensive in real terms. They’re also larger, heavier, and much more complex, but that’s a function of both customer preference and regulatory influence, not of what the engineers are able do. Are you ready to give up your airbags, climate control, power windows, and Carplay system? Would you like to sit in traffic smelling the tailpipe pollution from 35 years ago? Me, neither.
Second, it was a visceral reminder that numbers do matter to customers — both for practical and bragging rights reasons. 167 mph! In a Golf!
Let’s stipulate that almost nobody will go that fast in their Golf R. Even for a buyer willing to risk prison time, there are just too many cars on the road these days to be able to let a truly fast car off of its leash. But that number will still matter to this target market, who will universally love the idea of having and driving a car with that level of performance, regardless of whether they can or will ever use it.
And of course cars aren’t the only sphere where numbers like this matter. Consumers who watch a lot of TV care about the numbers too. I don’t know many people who would consider a 42” 720P TV, when 55” 4K models can be had for less than $250 — and the well-heeled will even spend 10x that for a 75” 8K model. Need a laptop? The flip-side of Moore’s Law is that software publishers keep pace, regularly eating the gains made on the hardware side with slower, bulkier software. If you’re a heavy computer user, are you going to buy a new laptop with an old processor, little memory, and scant storage capacity that will struggle to house and run the latest applications in three years? Maybe you’d prefer to splurge for something a little faster with a more memory and storage so that it won’t become obsolete quite as fast.
And of course, it’s not just consumers who care about numbers — if anything, they matter even more in the B2B world. Opening a plasma center? Would you lean towards plasma collection devices that can collect a unit of plasma in :35 minutes or :45? What about your office printer/copier? Do you want something in the 15-page per minute range or something closer to 90? Factory equipment, networking infrastructure, HVAC systems, elevators, most anything — the products purchased by the B2B world are absolutely dripping with “speeds and feeds” stats; so many that it can be hard for decision-makers to make sense of them.
That takes me to the third thought triggered by the 167 mph Golf: It reminded me that the numbers will only take you so far. Product teams need to make roadmap decisions based on an understanding of which numbers matter, why they matter, and they need to be able to explain to their commercial teams why the buyers will care.
For Product Managers, it’s crucial to know which numbers to focus on, what the right targets are for Engineering to hit, and why. There are trade-offs in everything, and finding the right mix of requirements (in many case manifested as numbers) is part of the discipline of Product Management. In the case of the Golf R, there was probably a top speed goal, but that goal had to live alongside targets relating to fuel economy, cost, noise, emissions, braking distances, durability, cooling capacity, tire wear, aerodynamic stability, and many, many others.
For Product Marketers, the trick is to figure out how to relate those numbers to what the buyer is trying to achieve — to attach those numbers to an emotion. There is a powerful emotional draw for hot hatch shoppers to numbers like power output, acceleration times, and top speeds, and in that context a 167 mph number will absolutely resonate with those adrenaline seekers. Establishing emotional connections to the numbers can be more difficult with B2B buyers. A good place to start is by understanding how your numbers can impact the goals and objectives that buyer is being measured against: What will get them a bonus, and what might get them fired.
Back to an example I cite above: For a plasma collector’s operations team charged with increasing plasma collections by 10% this year, saving an average of :10 mins per plasma collection procedure might go a long way towards increasing the collection capacity of each center, making that goal more easily achievable. It might also make donors more willing to come in to donate if they know they’ll be in the center and on the bed for less time, making it easier to fill up that increased capacity with returning donors. So there are some obvious things about that :10 minutes that might connect with the buyer and give them hope (an emotion!) of hitting their objective of 10% growth in collections. That’s a great start, but it may not be enough to seal the deal. Workflows can be complicated and changing one step can impact multiple things — some unexpectedly.
Backing-up that raw :10 minute number with a deep understanding of its potential impact to operations can help fill in the missing detail. If you have observed in the field what happens to the overall balance of donor flow through a plasma center when you take :10 minutes out of the procedure time, and can arm your sales reps to address questions about the impacts on staffing requirements, training requirements, staff satisfaction, donor satisfaction, staff retention, and more, you will have much more credibility with that buyer than talking about the procedure times, alone. Getting to that point might require a study with an early adopter in some test sites, and will certainly require time and effort, but being able to engage with a customer about their process from an informed position as a trusted advisor is far more powerful than being able to only throw out some numbers.
There’s no doubt that it’s a lot of fun having bragging rights for your product, and 167 mph certainly got my attention. Mission accomplished, VW Marketing! It’s incumbent on the rest of us to put ourselves in a position to use the numbers for our products to create a similar emotional connection with our buyers and their needs.
As always, thanks for reading.
J
