Attractive Thinking. Chris Radford
our non-work time acting as a customer and thinking like a customer. We see businesses through the viewpoint of the customer. But as soon as we enter our workplace, we lose that perspective and start thinking like a supplier. We all need to work hard to combat this and look at things from the customer’s point of view. Great business leaders can do this persistently and with ease, but they are rare. The rest of us need to work at it. There are two aspects to this to look out for.
Understand what really matters to customers
The supplier (that is us, the marketers and creators) will often misjudge what is important to customers about the product or service. For example, when a hotel manager and conference organiser for a big conference are asked about how they organise the coffee breaks at a big event and what really matters to the conference guests, the manager comes up with a list like this:
• great tasting coffee;
• clean crockery;
• nice buns, snacks and biscuits;
• immaculate table linen;
• smiling helpful staff.
This list describes things that do matter. But when you ask the guests what matters to them, they have different priorities. Their list is like this:
• high-capacity washrooms so I don’t have to queue;
• fast access to tea and coffee;
• drinks other than tea and coffee;
• lots of space to hang out with people;
• somewhere to make a quick phone call.
The customer list is not about the features of the coffee and catering service. It is about whether I can do what I want to do in the coffee break. We can have no doubt the items in the manager’s list do matter to the conference guests. But the chances are they take these catering things for granted. The guest’s list is about things that if they are not in place, then the experience is frustrating. The customer list shows us things where we could be exceptional.
The ability to focus on benefits that matter rather than features that don’t
In my consulting business Differentiate, when we do the work in POSITION, we ask our clients to determine the features and benefits that will attract customers. They generate a list and a ranking. We then ask the customers to come up with their list and ranking. The management team usually get about an 80% match with the customer view. Most typically the difference is that the management are convinced that things that are difficult to do or expensive to produce are valuable for the customers. But the problem is the customer places no value on our investment and hard work. They only value things that help them achieve something or experience something that they desire and value.
Here is an example where we asked conveyancing lawyers what mattered to their customers in choosing a conveyancing firm to complete their house purchase or sale. Here are their top seven features and benefits of their service that matter to customers. The emphasis in this list is based on their competence and hard work:
Conveyancing lawyers’ list of what is important (is what they do)
1 Service consistently good.
2 Will get deal done quickly.
3 Has good admin back-up.
4 Has experience and knowledge.
5 Works hard on my behalf.
6 Proficient at conveyancing.
7 Can rely on info they give.
These are all important and worthy attributes. But when we asked the customers, the emphasis was different. The customers are after getting the deal done, being updated and a proactive approach. What they care about is the outcome:
Conveyancing customer list of what is important (is the results they achieve and experience they have)
1 Will get deal done quickly.
2 Foresees and solves problems.
3 Keeps me updated.
4 Calls back quickly.
5 Answers phone quickly.
6 Takes responsibility and is proactive.
7 Service consistently good.
If we want to start with the customer, we must shake off the supplier’s mindset and get a customer’s mindset. We will look at how to do this in detail in PINPOINT and POSITION.
Now we will explore why starting with the customer is so fundamental to growing our brand, the four things all successful businesses have in place, some examples of successful businesses and the four insights about customers that we must understand.
High-growth businesses have four things in place
Have you noticed that when things are going well for a business everything seems to fall into place? Customers turn up, they buy the products, staff want to come and work for the firm, the business has spare cash, people are having fun at work. It feels like that growth will continue forever.
As an example, Daniel Priestley’s Dent company runs a programme called Key Person of Influence for entrepreneurs who want to raise their profile and accelerate their growth. The way Dent runs their business makes it look easy. They promote their scorecard with advertising, they have a lot of free content, they run events which seem to fill up easily, people who come to the events sign up for their strategy sessions and their Key Person of Influence course programmes are full.
On a different scale, Google appears to effortlessly attract a higher share of advertising £s $s and €s each year. Google seems to find it easy to be the most popular search engine with the most users.
Big food brands such as Marmite, Kellogg’s, Coca-Cola, Walkers, Danone and Wall’s Ice Cream make it appear they don’t have to sell their products, they just put their products on the supermarket shelf and people buy them, the brands seem to sell themselves.
To the outsider or the competitor, it seems these successful players have secured a position that gives them an unassailable advantage. Smaller competitors feel like they must work harder to get the same results. To some extent it is true that these successful businesses have secured an advantage. But what we can be sure of is that it did not and does not just fall into their laps. They may make it look easy but it is not easy; these businesses work relentlessly to ensure they have four things in place:
1 A value proposition for their customers that is relevant, distinctive and differentiated.
2 They communicate it with sufficient power.
3 They make sure they deliver it every time and every day.
4 The business has basic economics that work.
These four success factors for business were shown to me by Mike Harris16 during a training and mentoring session and when I saw them it was like a bolt from the blue. There is not really anything else that you need to do to create business success. High-growth businesses have all these four things working together. Businesses that struggle are missing one or two of them or are just a bit weak on one or two of them.
I can hear you thinking, there is another success factor Chris has not mentioned. What about people? A well-motivated, professionally managed and skilled workforce is perhaps the most important factor for success. This is true. Without a great team, we cannot create success. But what we are examining in this book is what the team is setting out to achieve. I will leave other books to examine the skills of leadership, recruitment and team motivation. Attractive Thinking is all about what our team needs to do to attract more customers. Let’s examine each of these four success factors.
A value proposition for customers that is relevant, distinctive and differentiated
Our value proposition is what we do for or will offer to our customers