Nov 08 2009
What Would Happen If We Saw Things The Way Our Customers Saw Them?
The JF Guest Author Spot
Dave Brock
Most of the organizations I work with are very high performance organizations. They have great products, great sales people, and provide solutions that can have great impact on their customers. However, in meeting with them, I often hear, “Our customers just don’t get it, they don’t see the impact we produce! How do we get them to better understand?”
The challenge, time after time, is that we have great products that solve important customer problems. But we express those problems that we solve in our terms—using our language. Because we are sophisticated it has to include at least one really cool acronym, and if we are in high tech it should mention social media or at least a cloud or two.
But our customers see things differently, they don’t talk like we do. They express their problems in different terms–their terms. (Why are we surprised by this?) We tend not to connect with customers because we are speaking different languages. We see the same problems, but from different points of view. We actually can solve their problems, but the customers don’t know it. Putting myself in customers’ shoes, often, I read the marketing materials or listen to sales presentations and feel like they are speaking Swahili and I only understand English. Why can’t they speak my language and talk about things that I worry about?
I had a great conversation with a talented sales professional the other day. He was lamenting on the same issue. He said, “I know how to ask the most powerful open ended questions about this problem (Imagine one that you solve for customers). Their response is always ‘I don’t have any issues with that,” or ‘Huhhhhhhhh?????????? What’s that mean???’” Since he is a great sales person, I asked, “How do you connect with your customers and get them to understand?” He replied, “Unfortunately, I have to take all our presentations and change them. I know what their hot buttons are and the terminology they use. When I use those, they immediately understand what I’m talking about. I explain our products in their words and we connect.”
Many years ago, I managed a team selling CAD/CAM software. Our sales people spent a lot of time talking to automotive designers about “flow lines.” Those car designers, really got what we said and liked our products. We ran into trouble when we went to the airplane companies. We started talking to them about the tremendous capabilities we had with “flow lines” and their engineers said, you don’t solve our problems, we care about aerodynamic wing surfaces. It turned out our capability in flow lines was the same capability the aeronautical engineers needed for aerodynamic surfaces, we just were explaining it in terms that had no meaning to them. We almost lost some very large sales because those customers didn’t think we could solve their problems!
Sales becomes very easy when we start thinking like our customers. When we use the words they use, rather than our words for expressing a problem or discussing a concern, we immediately connect. Marketing has higher impact when we are using the language of our customers. Brochures and materials in Mandarin, probably don’t have a great impact in Mexico. Likewise, if our brochures are filled with our pet phrases, cool buzz words, or neat acronym’s. Marketing materials that talk about what we do in the customer terms have great impact.
Doing this effectively creates a great challenge for sales and marketing professionals. We can no longer be satisfied with a “one size fits all approach” to our customers. We have to tailor strategies, programs, materials to our high priority market segments. We have to be knowledgeable of their problems, goals, and challenges—in their terms. We have to present our capabilities, addressing the issues they view as important, using the language they use.
Use the customer’s terms and language. Focus on the customer perspective and connect. It seems so simple (maybe too simple), but we consistently fail to do this. We focus on what’s important to us, we impose our language on the customer and expect them to do the translation for themselves. Imagine what could happen if we changed our point of view and aligned it with our customers’. We might be able to sell a lot more—-more efficiently.
Dave Brock works with organizations to help them achieve the highest levels of performance excellence. He helps them identify and execute new business, sales, marketing and customer service strategies. His goal is to have a profound difference on the lives and results produced by his clients.
Dave is the founder and CEO of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a leading business consulting company. He has held executive roles in IBM, Tektronix, and other large technology companies. He is an investor, advisor, and director of several high technology start-up companies.
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Dave,
You get a big AMEN on this fantastic post.
Seeing things from the customer perspective remains a huge area of improvement for many sales people.
This would be a great topic for sales people to have in their next sales meeting . . . “Seeing things from the customers perspective” Perhaps it could be inclusive of a brainstorming session of the many things that buyers find irritating in the buying experience as well as a discussion on the things businesses truly crave such as more sales, more profit, happy customers, streamlied efficiencies etc.
Thank you for the wake up call Dave!
Respectfully,
Paul Castain
Paul, thanks for the great comment and the suggestion. I think a very powerful series of incorporating this notion into sales meetings could be developed by managers. We’ve done something similar in which we look at the drivers/concerns of different buyer persona’s in the customer (ie CFO, CIO, VP Sales, CMO, etc.)
To expand on your comments, though, this is not just a sales issue — in fact sales are the first to see this challenge (at least in my experience). Often the greatest challenges are in marketing, product management, and other functions. We need to get them to start seeing things from the customer point of view as well.
Thanks for the great comment! Regards, Dave
Great stuff guys!
Someone you both know quite well recently wrote:
“Gone apparently, are the days when the customer is King – now the customer is barely a pauper; short-term profit is the driver and ensuring that the customer experience is as impersonal, uncomfortable and as frustrating as possible, the primary objectives.
Directors and Management often see customer relations as the affair of a ‘Complaints Department’ whilst they get on and run the business – which is a form of warfare carried out against the irritating habits of customers seeking fair treatment, a fair deal or equality of relationship.
Salespeople often see customers as an unruly, disobliging and dishonest source of commission.
Support staff accept that they are paid to (try to) cope (on a good day) with unreasonable, whinging, stupid, ungrateful customers who just will not be told.
Administrators see customers as dunces who must be forced to follow the rigid procedures developed for the convenience of the supplier (an endless nuisance to the customer).
Technical people often see customers as stick-in-the-mud know nothings to be loftily put in their place by the use of elitist techno-jargon.
Production people ignore customers entirely because otherwise they would get in the way of how they want to run the place.
Finance people treat customers not as people but as reference numbers with obligations required to fit processes.
Unkind comments? Not at your place? Great! But anti-attitudes like this abound right across the commercial spectrum. You transact business with your customers — not despite them! Customers pay the wages for everyone, not just the salesforce.”
Best
Jonathan
Well Dave and Jonathan, this is an interesting discussion indeed and I’m certainly in agreement with your sentiments regarding the customer paying the wages for everyone.
I really believe there are different extremes of what you detailed Jonathan. I think we need to beware of the evil cousin to what you described and that’s a philosophy of “it aint my job” Sometimes we are so busy finger pointing within our organizations that our customer is being held hostage.
Perhaps its time for smart businesses to step back, regroup and really get back to the basics of what this is really about and who we really work for?
This is one of those discussions where you can leave with many actionables.
Well done!
Respectfully,
Paul Castain