We Can't Go Forward . . . If We're Stuck In Reverse

Published in: IPA Bulletin, March/April 2002

Let's cut to the chase: if we don't wake-up and change how we see our business and what we do for our customers, performance results aren't going to change. Customers are different today and in the future from anything we've experienced in the past. But too many of us are looking back in our daily attitudes and practices – grieving over (a) the loss of a major customer, (b) insensitive bankers, (c) how September 11th, Enron, and the dot-com collapse have ruined our business, and (d) the difficult-to-understand practices of desired customers.

Regardless of our equipment, skilled personnel or available technology, one marketplace condition is predictable: desired customers and prospects are also faced with overwhelming challenges and competition. However, if we'll take the time to ask, these target accounts will candidly confess that they need reliable, aggressive and proactive suppliers – like never before.

In today's environment, there's a whitewater of changing market conditions and trends that are impacting what each of us should be doing. Yet too many of us appear in a trance – numbingly doing what we've always done. For example, ongoing "compression of time" for buyers is impacting how day-to-day customer service in each supplier organization is becoming at least as important as competent account executive talent. Buyers need information and "execution," and won't tolerate having to play phone tag. Yet, the average graphic arts company in general, and prepress supplier in particular, still positions customer service as a clean-up, organizational entry-type position.

In today's fast-paced environment, the "reliably easy to do business with" supplier, who understands the customer's business, has a strategic edge. Yet the average company almost never tracks why customers call, or publicly sets standards for how long a customer should expect to wait before receiving an answer – including to voice mail or e-mail inquiries. In fact, most organizations don't ask and document their target customers' preferred medium of communication.

We have a client who recently published in his quarterly report (to customers, prospects and suppliers) that buyers should expect a return call in less than one hour. When a top account called the next week, the buyer's comments were riveting: "I just wanted to see if you practiced what you preached. You might want to let the rest of your people know that I tested your claim. We didn't think you could do it; we certainly can't, and our other suppliers don't. Keep it up!"

Additionally, many customer organizations are repeatedly downsizing in efforts to accomplish more with less, and faster, in a crushing competitive environment. In doing so, buyers are faced with needing suppliers who understand the buyer's business, ask about their performance objectives and goals, and whom they don't have to train.

An often unrecognized corollary for these buyers: practically no one prefers to train a new supplier who only has a lower price to offer. Or, as one major agency buyer related at a buyer education program, "I wouldn't want my current suppliers to know this, but while I steadily ask more of them, I don't begin to have the time needed to interview, select, and train a new supplier."

There are huge implications in that statement for what changing roles our customer contact people need to be filling. These include: proactively acting as information resources to target buyers; staying updated on technical issues and company capabilities; and, perhaps most important, account executives and CSR's staying in contact with each other on what's happening (and what needs to happen) at target customers and prospects to improve the customer's performance and create value.

I recently talked with a prospective client who's looking for assistance in growing his business. With a total of five account executives, he relates that his sales people seem to be very busy (he's hired only experienced people over the years), but top-line and bottom-line results don't seem to be growing. After a few questions are answered, I realize he's given me the beginning profile of an organization lacking a cohesive marketplace focus. Instead, his organization shows numerous symptoms of being internally oriented towards operations, and sales volume – for volume sake. When I asked, "In which customer markets are you working to elevate your company's value and differentiation?" his initial response was a moment of awkward silence.

 

Talk to Your Customers

1. What's their differentiation, and what are the values and products that distinguish this customer in its marketplace?
2. What's their business development strategy?
3. What are their goals and objectives for this (and next) year?
4. Why were previous suppliers asked to leave?
5. What's their mission? Do they have a mission statement? (Is it lived, or is it just a placard on a wall?)
6. Profile of their customers?
7. Sources of their customers?
8. What trade shows and conventions do they attend?
9. If anything were possible, what would they like to change in what they receive or experience from suppliers?
10. What changes do they anticipate for the next six to eighteen months?
11. How and why was their company started (there's a story there), and what continuing values permeate their business?

If ever company differentiation and customer market focus were important, it is more important now with customers looking for suppliers who can impact their performance. This begs the question, "How can we expect to create more value for our customers – through their business performance improvement – if we don't really know their business?"

If you question the voracity of that statement, then answer the following question? Can you describe the performance goals and objectives for your top three customers?" If you can, you're one company in a thousand (some would say ten thousand). If you can't, you're reduced to being a "reactive, price-driven supplier." In effect, without knowing your buyer's objectives and goals, your buyers have to ask you for something before you can create any potential value, and even then you're far more likely to be compared on price to your nearest friendly competitor.

In every supplier organization, someone needs to be charged with the responsibility of developing new business. Mind you, I didn't say processing orders or responding to customer requests. Those latter activities are important, but pale to the strategic issue of developing new business – the foundation of what our business may look like in 12 to 24 months.

Recently, a client CEO said, "I recently looked back at what our business looked like in 1992, and only 5 percent of the business we had then is still here. We should have been looking forward and making the marketplace we wanted, rather than expecting well-produced product to bring us the next order, or thinking how good we were if we made a noticeable profit."

His organization is now seriously re-evaluating their whole orientation of what their customers experience, what their customers are trying to achieve, and what they as a supplier should know and do in order to be proactive in customer relationship building. Specifically, inquiry revealed that there was not one piece of documentation concerning what their target customers were trying to achieve for 2002. However, there was an extensive quote log showing an incredible stream of quotes they had not won.

Understandably, change is painful for all of us. However, acceptable quality, reliable turnaround, and competitive prices are expected, and not a competitive edge. Successful suppliers are expected to not only know their target customers' objectives and goals, but to systematically update and use that information to remain proactive in elevating the customer's performance.

If we put ourselves in our customer's position, we can quickly discern that we can obtain a lower price from a supplier. But finding a supplier who understands our business, knows our goals and objectives, and proactively brings us what we had not yet asked for is building perceived customer value. That's elevating our market differentiation.

And that's creating value for better reasons than price – through better understanding of target customers' performance needs, and internally managing that information to proactively create improved performance – for the customer.

After all, that's the main reason we exist.