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It’s Only Common Sense: Getting Intimate With Your Customers

Relax, this is not what you think. This is about getting so close to your customers that you have a clear and concise understanding of what they need from a great supplier. You see, I am often asked for tips and ideas on how to create customers for life. Too often, we feel as if all that matters to our customers is price—and sometimes delivery.

Some of our customers will say, “All our suppliers are the same. You all do a pretty good job, so we don’t have to spend time doing a differential analysis; we just go with the best price, and we feel good about that.”

But is that all you have? Is that all you are to your customers? A blob of vendors delivering the same product, all doing “pretty good?” Is our success based on who buys the best lunches or belongs to the best country clubs?

In the words of the inimitable Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?”

I absolutely refuse to buy this. I find this thinking abhorrent and refuse to settle for this type of reasoning. I shudder with disgust when I hear a salesperson say that the only thing his customers care about is price and there is nothing that can be done about it.

In your heart, you know that’s not true. You really cannot figure out what else you can do? There is no way for you to shake things up? No way to be so much better than anyone else?

I disagree. In fact, I vehemently disagree. I disagree with extreme prejudice.

While price matters, there is more to it. I want to share one solid idea to enamor your customers so much they will fight tooth and nail with their accounting department to pay extra for your services and products. These are ways to get intimate with your customers and keep you at the top of their AVL.

Create a Co-company Partnership

Create a peer-to-peer relationship between your team and their team. Ask permission to bring the members of your team to visit their facility where your team will learn not only their needs but what it takes to make their jobs easier and more productive. For example, have your shipping person visit with their receiving person to find out how your product is received. By learning what your customer does with your product when it arrives will teach your shipping team how to better meet your customers’ needs. Once your person sees how the product is received, he can ask the receiver how he can make his job easier and then implement those ideas into his shipping process. The same can apply to all levels of both companies. Engineers to engineers, quality to quality, accounting to accounting, sales to sales, and even sales to purchasing.

Get everyone working together so that both companies are completely in sync and operating as one cooperative and productive unit.

Now, before you pull out the tired “50 reasons why this is a bad idea and won’t work,” keep in mind that this idea has worked in the past. Years ago, I was a regional sales manager and part of several programs that were based on this idea. Some of you night remember the old Digital Equipment ship-to-stock program which was very similar to what I am proposing.

In fact, I’m sure some of you are already involved in similar programs with your customers and can testify that this kind of thinking works.

Of course, you will need to convince your customers this is a good idea. Some will push back, but that’s okay. The most important thing is to find that one customer open-minded enough to give it a shot.

Maybe you start with a teaser: Just have your shipping person meet with their receiving person. After the customer witnesses the improvements, the benefits that come from it, she will be more willing to allow representatives from both quality departments to meet, and so on. Before you know it, you have a full-blown customer-supplier cooperative program and you’re off to the races.

Once you have a successful track record, your other customers, at least the more visionary ones, will start to fall in line. They’ll do this because you have established a type of cooperation that matters, and you back up what you say you will do.

Establish this kind of “intimacy” with your customers, and they will be hard pressed to let price still be their determining factor in vendor selection and order placement. Not to mention the fact that their company will now be filled with your advocates insisting that they want to use your products, services, and of course, your company.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.