Don’t Lose Sight... of Your Customer's Point of View

In today's extremely challenging economy there is an overwhelming tendency for leaders of most companies to focus internally, on expense reductions, operational efficiencies and the other demands of keeping a company in the black. The challenge for most leaders is to seek balance and to remember the other part of the equation and that is the revenue side. In other words, the customer.

I spoke at the annual meeting of Career Partners International, a consulting firm that specializes in executive training, recruitment, coaching and these days a lot of outplacement.  CPI has 160 partner firm offices in 20 countries.

My consulting firm is affiliated with Williams, Roberts, Young Inc., a Career Partners International firm. I was invited as the closing speaker, to wrap up a four-day meeting.

As you would expect, there was a lot on the agenda about internally focused issues. There was the sharing of best practices and lessons learned and all the other internal matters companies worry about — especially in these uncertain times. All important stuff, no doubt.

But I was impressed that CPI also made sure that the agenda allowed time to pause for the cause and that they didn't lose sight of their customer's point of view. In my presentation I challenged everyone to continue to ask the hard questions that we should be asking ourselves about our customers, constantly.  Here are some of those questions.

How do we THINK about our customers?  Do we think of them as a transaction and what they mean to our bottom line in the short run? Or do we think of them as a long-term partner and invest in the relationship as it continues to develop? I define a partnership as one in which both parties have a stake in each other's future. We cannot take our customers for granted, ever. Our thinking needs to be around the fact that we must continually win the right to earn their business on an ongoing basis. They don't owe us anything.

What do we KNOW or more correctly, what do we think we know about our customers? Do we know what they stand for, their mission statement, and their core values? Do we truly know their business, their customers, and their competitors? We better know! The more we know the more value add we can provide them.

What do we SAY about our customers and to our customers? We need to be very careful in our choice of words in both cases.  For example, do we say, "How do we get our customers to spend more money with us in a down economy? Or do we say, "How can we maximize our value add for the dollars they invest with us?" The first question sounds more like the "transaction" I mentioned above and is certainly more internally focused. The second question sounds more "partnership" oriented and takes on a more external focus. Do we say, "How do we increase our market share with them? Or do we say, "How do we help our customer increase their market share?" Wouldn't you agree that the first question sounds more short term, transaction-like, and internally focused and the second sounds more long-term, partnership based, externally focused?

Another question we need to routinely ask is "Do we LISTEN to our customers?" We might "hear" them but do we truly "listen" to what our customers are saying or not saying? We all know what happens when we assume we know what is most important or what is best for our customers. Listening is more important now than ever. We need to listen not only to what our customers are saying but how they say it and what words they use. When we talk to our customers and begin using their nomenclature and their acronyms, they acknowledge that now we are on the same page with them and that we are talking the same language, language that they understand and that has meaning to them.

If we lose sight of the customer's point of view, and no longer hear what they have to say, the end is near. We will lose the relationship and corresponding revenues. We cannot make up for these losses with cost reductions.  We need to work on both sides of the equation, revenue and expenses, simultaneously, before we can arrive at the right sustainable answer.  

I would love to hear your stories on how you keep your business focused on the customer.