Your business as seen through the eyes of your customers

Your Business From the Customer’s Point of View

By Dave Howell

• customer buying cycle
• customer life cycle
• SWOT

The customer decides how and when to buy.

I am amazed at how many business owners or executives forget what drives their revenue stream – the customer’s point of view. Innovation is not about creating the next Facebook, it’s about operating your business like a very large rubber band with the customer holding one end and you the other. You are never sure how much pressure the customer will put on your business (forecast), or how long any pressure will last (life cycle management), or even when the customer will release pressure (SWOT). Because business has so many variables it is wise for owners and leaders to pay attention to what the customer is saying about your product or service (voice of the customer).

In marketing 101 we learned that two types of businesses exist, push and pull. Push is where you create demand and deliver the product, while pull means the customer is creating the demand. Simple isn’t it? Not so fast. In today’s world, the Internet has helped shape a connected world, where more and more, the customer owns much of the product cycle and the customer cycle. If customers, through research and referrals, decide when to consider and make a buying decision, where does that leave businesses?

Enter integrated communications and marketing. Leaders and marketers should find out from the customer what they want, how they want it and when they want it in order to define how to deliver their product or service. Innovation then is about looking at the buying process from the customer’s view. This becomes a requirement for all innovation, as pushing products into the market place rarely produces the desired results.

Designing or re-designing your product or service delivery system should align with the customer’s desires. If this is the case you may find product, pricing, placement and other marketing strategies constantly in flux, but with a fast moving world, you should expect fluctuation as part of your continuous improvement and evaluation. Business intelligence is not just about the competition and what they are doing for the customer, it’s about what your customers want from you.

Now the question begs, “How do I best go about obtaining and assessing my customer’s views?” The answer is necessarily not that easy but is a worthwhile function within every business. Let me give you some tips on the customer’s point of view:

1. Start thinking through what your client’s International product or service life cycle is and how the world is impacting the customer.

2. Consider how the product or service is viewed in the United States or the country primarily where it is sold.

3. Next, examine how the product is performing in your customer’s region to see what market forces are impacting it.

4. Assess how the customers are using the product or service locally.

5. Finally, design a continuous assessment of the industry, segment and location to understand how your product or service is being used on a regular basis (at least monthly or quarterly).

I like to think that if we are a customer of our own product or service, then our own wish list about how the product or service is delivered, priced or performs serves as a reasonable benchmark of how other customers feel about the product or service. However, our own ideas are jaded by being too close and we see it through rose colored glasses. Removing these filters require you talk to real customers and have them define what they want and need from the product or service.

So, we come full circle back to voice of the customer, as this is the key driver for your product or service, despite what we may think the customer determines when they will buy and how they will buy because they will have a need or want to fulfill. Marketing employs the sales the team to tighten the focus in lead generation after marketing creates an awareness and at least part of the consideration, and sales appeals to the customers needs and wants to close the sale how and when the customer decides – they current customer’s point of view!

For more information about how Blue Planet Marketing can assist your leadership and marketing team, call 210-618-6566 or visit #bpmktg.com.