The conference room had whiteboards and post-it-notes showing the pros and cons of each competitor. SWOT analysis and other MBA-type tools permeated the space. The management team and their colleagues were trying to figure out a strategy for success. Big data was important to their analysis as they did fancy regression analysis and looked at trendlines. They revisited their algorithms driving their business too. They had everything they needed in the room but were missing one thing.
The customer and her needs.
When management centers a business around serving a customer, everything starts by understanding what role your business can play in helping them achieve their goals. Those needs may not be things you are currently capable of doing; they may require investment or new approaches to your business. When you have the customer at the center and the starting point, you learn the most potent marketing lesson. Customers want to solve their problem and you can bring value serving them not force feeding them something they don’t need or want.
One of my clients Nomaco makes a lightweight, flexible engineered foam that replaces heavier wood-based materials for concrete and construction projects. Over many years, they hypothesized, what would happen if we could do everything the wood does but we make it easier to carry their product to the job site. Their product is 75% lighter than their current material.
Can you eliminate a pain point for the customer with something you can do? By adopting a customer-centric approach, Nomaco is replacing and disrupting an industry and their customers are happily served. You can watch a short video about Nomaflex, their customer-centric solution.
Another client Business Impact noticed that wineries didn’t have a robust solution to keep track of their trade, pricing, and promotional plans. When bar napkins are used to keep track of deals, you know that there is a better way to serve their needs. They created a solution called Tradeparency, to help them track trade deals and serve the needs for better data management with a simpler, closed-loop tool that gave everyone access at their fingertips.
Jeff Bezos from Amazon on listening to customer complaints: “The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There’s something wrong with the way you are measuring it.”
What is a customer-centric business or brand?
- The customer comes first. But not every customer, a particular customer who you can support with products and solutions that solve their problems. How can your brand or solutions help them solve a distinct problem for the customer on their journey?
- The customer’s needs drive product innovation. You begin with the need not the cool stuff that your plant or coders can create. You get paid bringing value to a specific customer’s need, not for showing up with something bright and shiny.
- Building relations is core to understanding your customer. Without spending time walking in their shoes, your plans can be of little importance to their concerns. I prefer to follow a smaller number of customers at a deeper level, then to have “vanity metrics” with millions of shallow relationships. Sometimes you can learn more by the non-verbal messages communicated that can be missed when you are crunching numbers.
- Most brand insights come from intimate and small-scale connections to customers. I love little data like understanding a pain point up close and personal. One of my favorite things to do is to go bowling with customers to hang out with them in the real world.
- Profitable and loyal customers can bring value for a long time. Companies without a customer-centric viewpoint are quick to grab revenue for the quarter and aren’t looking out for the lifetime value of customers. Earning a customer’s trust and business is hard and you have to earn it every day, in every contact point.
The cost to acquire customers is prohibitive. Churning is a sign that you don’t satisfy a customer’s needs. The better you understand who you serve, and what you offer them, the more successful businesses will be over time. Being customer-centric means spending time with the customer watching, listening and learning what story they want to tell and then becoming a part of that story.
Are customers at the center of your circle?
How much do you know about your customer? How deeply do you witness and observe their pain and passions for success? I have several tools in my toolkit to help. You can set up a time to chat using my calendar. The conversation is free and we can explore if working together makes sense. Or email me at jeffslater@themarketingsage.com or call me at 919 720 0995.
Photo courtesy of: https://www.flickr.com/photos/141855984@N03/
