66 – Listening to the Customer

I’ve got a really interesting topic that so many people make mistakes. It’s absolutely crucial if you’re in a business, in a company, starting your business, building your business. I’ll refer to it as listening to the customer.

Everybody talks about listening to the customer, but why do so many companies and people get it wrong? Many companies, even very large ones, have no idea where their markets are, or who is in the market, or who might be leaving the market; who might be entering the market. Sometimes it’s just utter ignorance, sometimes the market has changed and they’re not keeping up with it.

Think in terms of the auto industry. Back in the, say, 70s and before, there were really three companies here, and while there were those three companies, they were sort not really even competing very heavily; it was more what advertisements they had on TV, and traditions and loyalty to the different companies. Something happened, something changed, the Japanese came in with quality products, they were different in many different ways – it changed the market, and they weren’t ready for it. Sometimes it’s an accident, and sometimes they just don’t have a complete picture.

Something that I had given in speeches in a couple of companies (the last time was at Microsoft, another time was all the way back when I worked at General Motors), and that was early on (well, in Microsoft it was much later), I was asked to talk to the people that were what they call the evangelists all over the world, and they had come in. What I started out with was letting them know: People and businesses don’t give a damn about your products! There were a few open mouths in the audience and there was not a peep in the room. What they care about is what your products can do for them. Can it solve the problem? That’s what you focus on. It sounds obvious, but when we have a product and we have engineers who are developers in whatever industry it is, that have developed and built new features. They’re more interested in showing people their features than what the features can do for the business.

A few different examples on this. First of all, we can go all the way back – there was a period of time with Chrysler, when it was in its financial difficulties, etc., it had terrible cars. I was inside Chrysler at the time, very often talking to key executives, and they basically just kept on saying: “We don’t have any good products.” They knew it themselves. I asked them: “Why are your customers buying them?” They said: “We don’t know. They’re terrible.” They literally admitted that. I picked their weakest, most horrible car, and I said: “If you’ve got over 100,000 people buying that car, why are they buying it? Find out why those people are buying it, and that’s what you advertise. You advertise what the people are buying it as their preference. That is your advantage.” “Advantage Chrysler,” that was the campaign. Many of you who are older probably remember it well. When I first brought it to Chrysler, they just said to me: “We don’t have any advantages.” It was because they didn’t know why their own customers were buying their products.

Keep in mind: You find a niche in something or you find a hole in somebody else’s product. That is they don’t understand why somebody is buying their product – you can position yourself and advertise through marketing to position yourself as the advantage. Also, inappropriate or ineffective customer focus affects loyalty.

When I was at Microsoft, one of the early things that I did. The training & certification areas were focusing on helping the developers from the different product groups, such as the database server, the operating system, Windows, or the mail server, etc. They wanted to help them showcase the new features. Again, remember what I said: Nobody cares about the features of your product; what they care about is what it can...