Aligning the Dots: The New Paradigm to Grow Any Business

by Philippe Bouissou

Amazon Best Seller in Business and Amazon #1 New Release in Business. It's eight o'clock Monday morning.What do you do to outpace the market and grow faster than your competitors? Aligning the Dots provides a clear answer to that deceptively simple question.Although many how-to-grow business books have been published, none offer a pragmatic and reliable blueprint for top-line growth that is built on deep data analysis and a universal framework that leads to revealing insights. Without a clear roadmap to growth, a CEO's demands for innovative product development, better marketing, and increased customer acquisition and conversion often fail to produce desired outcomes. An effective leader understands that without clear direction and guidance, teams will revert to business as usual and no amount of inspirational taglines will help the business grow faster.Aligning the Dots introduces a new paradigm. It's a universal, data-driven and prescriptive methodology, called A4 Precision Alignment™, designed to accelerate any business. Based on the profound insight that the maximum top-line growth rate can only be achieved when a business and its target market are perfectly aligned, this methodology reveals how quantitative measurements of alignment form the base for the development a Growth Playbook.That blueprint will guide any business to align the dots to outperform its target market and fly past its competitors.

240 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 25, 2020

Reviews

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strategy to growth to execution

California author Philippe Bouissou, PhD has intensive experience for addressing the topic of this new book from his years of starting, running and investing in Silicon Valley businesses. His observations of other entrepreneurs and CEOs, the spectrum of personnel involved in corporate decisions, as well as his personal history have resulted in his development of A4 Precision Alignment – that paradigm of his book’s title. As he states, ‘My goal is to empower you to look at the world from a fundamentally new perspective based on the profound notion of alignment. Dozens of examples, case studies and specific data models demonstrate how to realize the perfect alignment for your business and inform actions that can unleash extraordinary revenue growth potential.’

Philippe is a Pro in many ways, one of which is his ability to capture attention through brief but pungent phrases placed throughout his book, such as ‘How well is your business aligned for growth?: Getting your business aligned, internally and externally, is essential for growth,’ ‘Growth is at the core of our very existence,’ and the chapter titles such as ‘From seed to maturity: the five stages of business growth – Infancy, Early Childhood, Middle Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood,’ ‘Growing is like drinking: it needs to be done responsibly,’ ‘the concept of alignment with examples drawn form adventure, science, technology, and business.’ And on and on, these striking moments proceed throughout this very readable book.

The key word of this informative and transformative tome is alignment, or as Philippe states, ‘If I had to summarize this book in one word and one word only, it would be alignment. Alignment is the key to maximizing revenue growth.’ What is offered is the technique to adapt and adopt the paradigm – a guide for both novices in the business world as well as plateaued, experienced persons. The comments about the impact of this book from an impressive array of business leaders certainly underline the importance of this fine book. Highly recommended.

[Pegboard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philippe Bouissou outlines the steps and expectations a business must go through to find a productive future in this fickle world with his book, Aligning the Dots: The New Paradigm to Grow Any Business. Using his experience, along with input from other business minded people along the way; you will find this business management book informative and educational.

Aligning the Dots by Philippe Bouissou is well-written and interesting to read. I enjoyed the examples of business ideas, tips, and case studies which are helpful, but my favorite would be by the founder and former CEO of Crate and Barrel, Gordon Segal. The integrity and loyalty in which they built their company makes this a model business to emulate. The author mentions many businesses that are making a difference in innovative ways. Some of these businesses I was not familiar with since they are on the other side of the country, but the vision they have is inspiring. This is a book that any entrepreneur will find motivating and stimulating.

[Jonathan Lu · Rating 5 out of 5]

All about alignment - customer (pain point), product (value prop), sales (GTM), and execution (FMOT/SMOT). A nice spin on how to think about critical business building topics.

A1: Customer pain aligned with business claim
- Levi Strauss (durable jeans) and Aperture Investors (no fee, all carry)
- Segway vs. scooter (price, safety convenience)
- Customer Pain Product Claim
What is the pain? Where does it come from? How do you articulate it? What pain do we address?
How painful is it? Intensity? What is the main claim we make?
How urgent to solve? What are the secondary claims?
What expectations do you have to solve the plain? Why are they unique / defensible?
Do you currently have a coping mechanism? How do we demonstrate claims? POC?
What would you do if the product did not exist? (current customers) Does the value outweigh the costs?

A2: customer perception aligned with business message
- Health IQ (insurance price discrimination for those who lead healthy lives) and Halo top (ice cream without remorse)
- Newton (uncertain product proposition)
Perception Message
MECE segmentation Market segmentation analysis
Size and growth rates per segment Prioritization
Pain level in each segment (heat map) How are segments identified / reached?
Message understanding / receptiveness Message for each targeted segment?
Competitive response How do you generate demand?
Competitive ecosystem Strategic marketing / lead gen?

A3: customer purchase aligned with business sale
- Enjoy (awesome white glove delivery experience)
- Macy's (missed out on consumers' desire for ecommerce convenience)
Purchase Sale
What is GTM? Existing delivery mechanisms
Channel / distribution? Mapping to market segmentation
Can you resell? Distribution model
What are you buying? What are you selling?
Terms, timing
Breakage, returns, defect Custom service experience

A4: customer delight aligned with business offering
- Blackberry (could argue that this was poor delight, or just a poor value prop A2)
- Chewy (high customer delight, white glove service touch)
Delight Offering
Customer delight journey Expected experience / NPS by stage
Importance weighting of each step in the journey Weighted delight score
Virality coefficient Mapping with market segments

A1-A3 examples are more phenomenological than predictive - a useful way to think about product and GTM, but it was the A4 chapter that started to introduce Philippe's business frameworks:
- Ideal outcome is delight slightly above expectation. Too low and misses results. Too high and leaves money on the table.
- Sinking tower and engagement triangle frameworks: I prefer my approach of at gross vs. net retention and cohort analysis
- Delightfulness coefficient - I like this one. A good combination of NPS by lifecycle stage (delighted) and customer journey to define lifecycle stage (Aha). Assign a weight to each stage, then measure NPS at each stage and weight:
○ Discover
○ Usage
○ Maintenance
○ Support
○ Upgrade
○ disposal
- Customer Segmentation by ARPU:
○ Drag: 10% of customers that contribute 1% of revenue. Gradually increase price or upsell, let churn out as price increases over time.
○ Core: ICP. 70% of customers that contribute 50% of revenue. Low maintenance and low churn.
○ Gold: higher usage, often customers that started as core then upsold.
○ Strategic: white glove customers - CEO should have a relationship with each one

Blue Dots' Consulting framework: Decision Making Process
1) Good Questions to customers
a. If I were to unplug the product on Friday, how would you feel and how would you spend the weekend?
b. What budget are you allocating for next year to the product? The year after?
2) Lost prospect interview guide:
a. Intro
b. General
i. current title
ii. roles/responsibilities
iii. # of employees / company size
c. Business
i. Volume in terms of revenue/transactions
ii. How much revenue from XYZ's segment?
iii. How did you hear about XYZ?
iv. How did you manage this segment before XYZ?
d. Decision
i. Why did you make the decision not to buy XYZ?
ii. Did you purchase a different solution instead?
iii. What pain point does that solution address for you? How high is that pain (1 to 5)?
iv. What other solutions did you evaluate / why did you not buy them?
v. How satisfied are you with the solution you chose? (1 to 5)
e. Closing
i. Last question / thoughts?
ii. Anything I did not ask that I should have?
3) Business Alignment Score
a. Ask customers to provide an adjective about their buying experience
b. Positive vs. negative words on a scale of 1 to 5 mapped to each alignment factor
c. Create a business alignment score (weighted? A1 / A2 / A3 / A4 more important by category or stage?)

d. Map over time


Internal Alignment
Axes of Alignment Mapping to A4 Alignment
Product Marketing / PD A1 Pain - Claim
Marketing A2 Market segmentation and lead gen awareness
Business Development A3: Sales Flywheel
Sales A3: Sales Flywheel
Operations Company enablement
Manufacturing A4: SMOT
Customer Success A4: TMOT
G&A Company enablement

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliant book for any business trying to get a handle on how their offerings measure up in the marketplace, which is most businesses today in the world of too much product chasing too few customers. Basically, Bouissou argues that you need to see how well your offerings match up on 4 criteria -- pain versus claim (does the customer feel the pain you offer to ease?); perception versus message (does what you say about your offerings match up to what potential customers are thinking?) ; purchase versus sale (do you sell your offerings in a way that is easy and makes sense to your customers); expectation versus offering (does your offering measure up to the advance notice?). You can measure each of the 4 axes pretty comprehensively these days thanks to net promoter scores and other big data options.

(Just a side note: I'm going to start holding Philippe responsible for the endless set of surveys, questionnaires, and free research I'm constantly asked to provide everyone from my plumber to Apple whenever I buy something. I'm a nice person, at least I used to be, and I believe in reciprocity, and I want to help the people who help me, but sometimes it all gets to be too much. Too many texts, emails, and web-based questionnaires!)

OK, I'm back. This is one of those earth-moving books that the right companies can use to transform their success in the marketplace.

[Denise Griffitts · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Aligning the Dots" by Philippe Bouissou is a practical and insightful book that provides a new paradigm for growing any business. Bouissou argues that businesses can only achieve long-term success by aligning their strategy, culture, and execution. He presents a framework that helps businesses to identify their strengths and weaknesses, develop a clear strategy, and create a culture that supports execution. The book is well-written, easy to understand, and provides numerous real-world examples and case studies. "Aligning the Dots" is a must-read for any business leader who wants to take their organization to the next level.

[Andrew Nicol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fresh perspective

I read a lot of Business, Startup and Leadership books and often feel like I’m reading the same ideas again and again.

Not so with this book. It provides a fresh way of understanding what makes a company at any level successful. Some huge insights, reminders and implications for me and the businesses I lead.

[Sunil Rajasekar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me but sadly, I did not get a lot of value from it. Found it to be super generic and a rehash of other well worn concepts and a slog to read.

[Matthew Roche · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thoughtfully conceived and articulated framework for evaluating what part(s) of your business "machine" are limiting your growth.

Very readable, with none of the oppressive repetition of most business books. It is clear the Bouisseau has though about this for a long time, and has refined it substantially to our benefit.

Enjoy