Beware the 'Walking Wallet' syndrome

It’s your monthly leadership meeting:

·????? Finance update ?

·????? IT/CRM update ?

·????? Latest project update ?

·????? This year’s staff picnic ?

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Done? Great, let’s all get out of here and get on with our jobs.

Hang on, dear CEO, where’s the customer????

There is a very real danger in business that customers are seen as simply sources of revenue. We get more customers, we get more money.

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Well, yes, but…if you treat your customers like walking wallets, those wallets are likely to walk off one day.

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One of the things I’ve noticed about successful businesses is that the customer has a voice everywhere…on the shop floor, in product development, in the accounts department, EVERYWHERE. Everyone gets to hear that voice, no matter what their role.

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And it’s not a voice in terms of numbers (how many, how much they’ve spent), but an actual voice saying ‘hey, this is what’s going on in my world, this is how it’s impacting me and, this is how it’s impacting my relationship with your business’.

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Just take a minute and look around your team: when was the last time they all spent time with a customer? Really….

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64% of customers (b2b and b2c) wish companies would respond faster to meet their changing needs, but if you don’t know what those changing needs are, how can you meet them?

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If the Finance Director doesn’t understand your customers’ needs, how will they build the right commercial model?

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If the HR Director doesn’t understand what your clients want, how can they create the right skill base across your business?

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Successful leaders know that customers are not walking wallets. They are the lifeblood of the business and must be put front and centre of the operation.

Here are three great things I’ve seen leaders do recently to get the voice resounding around their firms:

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Client Buddies

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A particularly forward-thinking MD client of mine runs a national group of accountants. Her clients are primarily SME business owners, with seemingly straightforward accounting needs.

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But she knows that the accounting part of the service is not really what her clients are interested in. It’s far more complex: it’s about security, safety, preservation of reputation. A whole host of things.

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So she’s put in place a buddy system. Her team members each take a group of clients and get to know them properly. They build real relationships to understand what problem they’re really solving and how they can do that better. It’s a great system and reaps huge benefits.

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Buy what you sell

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Have you actually bought your own product? Do you know how easy or otherwise it is?

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A Deputy CEO client of mine realised she had no idea how the customer journey played out, so she went ahead and undertook the whole shebang. The business offers training amongst other things, so put herself through the training course.

Painfully as it turned out.

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By buying what you sell and getting your team to do the same, you begin to understand the pain points your customers feel and what you need to do to fix them.

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Opening the cupboards

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I’ve worked with lots of multi-national retailers and what is enduringly true is that consumers say one thing and do another.

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They say they’re going to do dry January, but they do something quite different (looks away sheepishly).

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They say they’re going to try more own brand goods, but will resolutely stick to buying Heinz Ketchup.

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The Say-Do gap is real, and sometimes the only way to find out what’s actually going on is to open the cupboards (or the equivalent).

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My most recent retail client has monthly consumer panels and cupboard opening sessions. The cupboards are filmed along with the chats with consumers as to why they’ve made the choices they’ve made.

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And then the films are shared with colleagues. All colleagues from the warehouse to the shopfloor and through to the HR team in head office. The CEO knows the more his team understands what the customers want, the more they’ll be able to meet and exceed those expectations.

The best leaders I've worked with have a deep and profound recognition that they need to keep the distance between themselves and the customer as short as they can.

According to Bain and Co, businesses can grow revenues between 4% and 8% over and above the market. That’s a lot…..get opening those metaphorical cupboards.

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