Share of Customer by: Lou Lasday

Share of Customer by: Lou Lasday

There's a startling new paradigm shift in strategic direction about competition in business. It promises such market penetration that it has earned priority emphasis at the most prestigious graduate business schools across America.

Here is truly a new directional way that shifts the entire frame of reference from thinking in terms of "share of market" to "share of customer." It's not just a rethinking of established formats such as relationship marketing, frequency, retention or database marketing, although it certainly embraces these techniques. In truth, it's the next level.

To utilize this powerful new corporate initiative, you'll have to rethink the approach to your Gulf Coast organization's formal marketing plan. This paradigm shifts your visualization from mass marketing to mini-marketing and from "market share" to "customer share," or rather crassly stated, "your share of the customer's wallet."

Simply put, your assignment, should you buy into the concept, is to figure out how to get your individual customer to buy more of your products or services.

1. Find the target first

The initiative implies that using this approach, rather than focusing on a single product or benefit and selling it to as many folks as possible, you focus on the customer.

Here's how it's done: Identify the qualified individual customer or client first. Everyone, of course need not be a candidate. Because he or she has been through your doors, you at least know his wants. Now, using your own ingenuity, anticipate his "needs" and "desires." Then, address them on a continuing professional basis, exceeding his expectations.

Don't be reactive. Be proactive. Certainly, a "share of customer" is not just for multiple product companies. To think about getting a greater share of any single customer's business for your own company, you need only to envision the customer's stream of future needs and purchases as well as his current ones.

2. Shoot at the same target

Think of the tax attorney who wrote your legal will just one year ago. Would it not be natural for that counselor to call you now to see if you've had any changes in your family or business situation that would warrant updating existing documents or creating new ones?

Unwarranted solicitation you say? Sounds more like old-fashion concern to me! And, what about a new need for trust documents or business contracts?

Or how about your automobile salesman who telephones you when he sees (if he sees) a service department report that your 3-year-old car always needs parts or your trusty 4-year-old vehicle has hit 80,000 miles or that your 3-year lease will be coming due soon?

Consider the banker who has placed your mortgage just last year and now contacts you to utilize a low-rate home equity loan to finalize your furnishing or to acquire a new automobile. How about the Realtor who calls her upscale recent new home buyer to suggest an investment property right in the same neighborhood?

3. Multiple transactions

The examples of "share of customer" through multiple transaction never end. Authors Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, in their user's guide "One-To-One Future," suggest that multiple transactions from the same customer are really conditional events from which success depends on satisfaction from the previous event. In such cases, you can easily see where the concept of relationship marketing ties into share of customer. And, it all ties into product or service quality - and performance and delivery. That's a given.

4. The now and forever

The mass marketer - I've got something for everyone shotgun approach" - concentrates on consummating a greater number of transactions during a particular period. From his perspective, these transactions are all independent of each other.

The "share of customer" marketer - I've got everything for someone approach - concentrates on the now and forever lifetime needs and desires of building a relationship that anticipates and fulfills the every need of his customer or client within the marketers' area of specialization.

This "share of customer" dynamic then, assures you focus not on one-time transaction marketing, but on a series of transactions over time. Not as an on-off switch but as a volume dial that you are turning up! Then, you concentrate on the tasks of generating a greater share of the customer's volume in your product sector. With this approach, you'll cut off competition for your customer and build lifetime value for your firm.

The final word: Marketing doesn't end with making the sale. It's just the beginning!

Lou Lasday, an independent marketing adviser residing on Longboat Key, creates action-oriented strategic marketing initiatives for Gulf Coast emerging companies. A career direct response executive, he has been a general partner of a major national marketing communications firm and regional president of the American Marketing Association.