What Will Your Customers Need? By: Lou Lasday

What Will Your Customers Need?

Tomorrow's customers are the only people who can tell you what they will require to consummate your next sale. They ask: "What will you do for me tomorrow?" Marketers in almost every type of business are under the gun to perform faster, better, cheaper, and at the same time, add costly extra value to the mix. What your customers will want "tomorrow" will look significantly different from what they wanted "yesterday."

Front-end load funds are discounting. Realtors are negotiating. Airlines give multiple-trip pricing on a single web page. Competing life insurance rates come on one bid sheet. Mortgage rates are quoted like Shakespeare - "as you like it." Cell phone users are given new equipment just to keep from switching. The playing field is level again; now at a lower profit level. Price alone, without value is meaningless. The challenge then, is to determine what your customers really want and how much additional will they pay to have you customize your otherwise commodity service.

I need it - I want it

Marketing scholar Lester Wunderman predicted years ago that "the call of the Industrial Revolution (this is what I make - please buy it) is giving way to what may be termed the Consumer Revolution (this is what I need and want - please make it for me)."

This shift is well underway and it makes selling fundamentally different from the way it used to be. Philip Kotler, the acknowledged father of modern marketing whom we widely quote in this column succinctly describes this new environment as being so different that "companies must turn from a make and sell philosophy to a sense and respond philosophy."

To state the obvious, sellers must better understand this new wave. A clever application of anything isn't important unless customers think it is important. What matters to the seller must be whatever matters to the customer. That's because as Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton was fond of saying, "We all have a boss; it is the customer who can fire all of us."

It may sound simple, but there are still far too many misapplications and failure to understand customers.

Unique and superior

The American Marketing Association says that when a new product or service fails at an established firm or company, there is usually a chronological series of missteps. The biggest misstep is usually poor marketing research: failure to understand the customer. Conversely, the No. 1 success factor is a unique, superior product or service. The issue is, of course, the definitions of "unique" and "superior" will be determined by the customer. That goes for not just China Coast manufactured products, but also with Gulf Coast products and services of law, real estate, banking, advertising, accounting, hospitality and more.

A further complication is that we ask in our encounters, "Did we make you happy with the last transaction?" Rather we should be seeking insight as to: "What do we have to do to earn the next transaction from you?"

Listen, listen, listen

Measuring only customer satisfaction actually provides a business manager with something similar to a customer "wish list." In reality, it only reflects the customers' desire, hopes, dreams and frustration for more product and more service and lower pricing. But knowing what the customer is willing to pay up for may be just as important.

So how do you handle this new wave? The solution lies in becoming even more diligent in listening to customers and in being more selective about what to listen for.

Here are four questions you'll need to ask before you can predict the direction for future profit in your organization:

1. What will your customers need going forward and what will they be wiling to pay to get your value-added service?

2. How have they been satisfying their needs and what do they see are the current shortcomings?

3. How do your customers view alternative solutions from a standpoint of time, cost, quality and performance?

4. As you are now perceived by your customer, how important will your offerings be tomorrow?

The sun will come up

In some respects, the way you handle tomorrow's marketing trend appears to be much the same as it always was: watch the market, listen to the market and talk to the market everyday. The big difference now, however, is the challenge to realize that the market has changed. And, it's very difficult to predict the direction of that change. Predictions, however, are what is required. You must learn who tomorrow's customer will be and what he will expect from you.

The future is now and it's a brand new ballgame with new players with new aspirations, new weaknesses and new strengths. In the words of that 20th century philosopher, Yogi Berra, "predictions are hard to make; especially if it is about the future.

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