So who are my customers and where do they fit into the scheme of
things?
We
all like to think that we really know who our customers are and why they
like to buy from us rather than from our competitors. Yet most small business
owners find it difficult to accurately state who their
real customer
is. Surprisingly, many of them do not have a well-defined description
of their customer, nor the market segment their customer is part of. It
often ends up in a jumble of words including
consumer, end user,
customer and
client, with very few really knowing
or understanding how this puzzle fits together.
All successful and profitable businesses operate as value delivery
systems.
When I was the Fashion Direction Manager of the 42 Grace Bros. department
stores early in my corporate career, I realised that my customers operated
as a chain, which we now call a value delivery system.
My job required me to be the source and direction of all fashion marketing
information in the company. Fortunately, I realised early that there were
key links in the chain that formed the value delivery system. To achieve
my end goal, which was to enable customers to buy in an up-to-date coordinated
merchandising environment, I had to work with the series of vital links
in my value delivery chain.
My clients (who I rated as those who has bought from me at least four
times) were the merchandise buyers. I had to work with them to ensure
that the information we collected was suited to their target customer.
If they chose to ignore the information we distributed, we faced enormous
risks. (How many times have you tried to match men's or women's tops with
a pair of pants in a major department store and failed?) So my focus was
in developing a very thorough understanding of their expectations, needs
and wants, as well as in developing a strong relationship with each and
every one of them. My customers included Grace Bros.' advertising, visual
merchandising and promotions departments as well as the store and department
managers. I needed to develop strong business relationships with these
functional managers in order to influence their decisions. The actual
end consumers were the men, women and children who bought the merchandise.
An end user was the person who actually wore or used the item purchased.
Each vital link in the chain brought its own set of expectations,
needs and wants.
The challenge lay in not neglecting any one link in the chain. My job
was to know them all intimately, because each of them was instrumental
in my ability to be successful.
These same principles apply to every business.
I recently consulted to a small training company and was able to help
the Managing Director construct the business' value chain. Until then,
she had assumed that her key focal point was the person who attended her
training workshops. After much discussion and debate, she reconstructed
her value delivery chain to include the training broker as her client.
The broker was then established as the main focus point for all of her
business interactions. She did this because it was the broker who forged
the vital link and sourced most of the business for her.
The broker needed reliability, credibility, and design and delivery excellence.
She established the human resources or training manager as her customer,
because they needed a completely different set of expectations, needs
and wants. The course participants, who all had different learning needs
and wants from the training program, became her consumers.
So take some time to chart your business' value chain. You can't imagine
the difference it will make to how you do business and the results that
can be achieved!
Janet Sernack successfully runs her
own learning and development consultancy, Compass Learning, where she makes a difference to
small and large businesses by facilitating
culture change programs, learning
organisation initiatives and improved
business and marketing planning.
She has
also held senior management positions in
the wholesale and retail sectors, most
recently as Marketing Development
Manager with Grace Bros.
Connect with Janet
Email: janetsernack@gmail.com
Websites: www.janetsernack.com, www.compasslearning.com.au and www.thegloballeadershipretreat.com
Blog: janetsernack.blogspot.com
