Trellis & Branch | About a 5 minute read
In Amazon’s early days, Jeff Bezos was known for leaving one chair empty at the conference table. That seat belonged to the customer, the most important person in the room.
The chair was a constant reminder that every decision, from pricing to shipping to what to build next, should start with what the customer needs.
Most of us started with a product, a skill or an idea we believed in. Over time it is natural to keep asking, “What else can we make or sell?” The better question is often, “What do our customers need that we are not giving them yet?”
Start with a specific person
Who are you serving? Be as specific as you can. “Anyone who needs our product” is hard to build a business around. “Family-owned manufacturers in Florida with 20 to 100 employees” is something your team can picture, talk to and design for.
A clear picture helps with decisions big and small: what to build, what to say, which customers to chase and which to politely pass on. Not every customer is the right customer: which customers are the most profitable, and which take the most effort for the least return?
Listen before you build
It is tempting to guess what customers want, especially when you know your industry well. Guessing is cheap and fast, and it is wrong more often than we like to admit. Asking is a little uncomfortable and almost always worth it. Here are four ways to start this month:
Call five customers, and don’t sell. Tell them you are trying to serve them better and would like to learn. Then mostly listen.
Call a customer you lost. They will tell you things current customers are too polite to say.
Ask your front line. Your sales team, customer service, drivers and production leads hear the same requests and complaints every week. Often nobody has asked them what they are hearing.
Read your own data. Repeat orders, returns, complaints and the quotes you didn’t win all describe what customers value.
A few questions that tend to open people up:
What were you trying to get done when you came to us?
What almost kept you from buying?
What do you do when we can’t help?
If we disappeared tomorrow, what would you miss?
A small tip: after you ask, stay quiet a little longer than feels natural. Write down their exact words. And try not to defend or explain, even when it stings. The goal is to understand, and people can tell when you are doing that.
How are you serving them?
Customers choose a business for a reason, usually price, quality, speed or service. Most businesses can be excellent at one or two of these and average at the others. That is fine. What matters is knowing which one your customers value most, since it tells your team where to put effort and where “good enough” is perfectly acceptable.
Listening is how you find out. It is common to learn that customers value something different from what you assumed, such as reliability over the lowest price, or a quick answer over a perfect one.
Create for them, then test small
Once you hear a real need, resist the urge to build the full solution right away. Offer a small version to a handful of customers and watch what they do. Do they use it? Do they ask for more? What are they paying? A small test costs little and teaches a lot, and the customers who help you shape it often become your strongest advocates.
A few questions to sit with
Who exactly is my best customer, and what do my best customers have in common?
When did I last ask a customer what they need, as opposed to what they think of what we do?
What does my front-line team hear that I don’t?
Which one customer need could we meet better in the next 90 days?
You do not need a formal research project to begin. Five honest conversations will teach you more than you expect.
If you would like a partner in hearing what your customers are telling you, I help leadership teams with go-to-market strategy, customer research and channel analysis, and with turning what they learn into action. I would be glad to talk about what that could look like for you.
Nicole Ciavola, Principal Consultant, Trellis & Branch
Source: Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management (1954).