Put yourself in your Customer's Shoes

Whether you are an entrepreneur, a marketer, a product manager or a sales professional, the first thing you need to do is understand your customer. Sounds easy, right? Wrong!

How can you understand someone if you haven't been in their shoes? So what you need to do first is put yourself in their shoes, walk the journey that they have walked and then, and only then, will you be able to truly understand how they think, what matters to them and how can you talk to them.

Now, I know it's difficult to follow in their footsteps in reality. But you can still do the next best thing. We humans have a mind which has the ability to think and imagine. So imagine yourself being in your customer's shoes, standing at the point where they started their journey and then in your head, walk that road, noting down every little detail that you can imagine in your head. Trust me, the devil is in those details.

I know how boring theory can be; so I'll try to explain this with an example. I am currently working with a business that has Food Brands as it's clients. So I'll take this as an example (also for the reason that my team would be reading this later and it'll help them process this better :P).

So I start by imagining myself as a person who wants to start a food business. If I wanted to start a food business, I would first of all think of how it would be different from all the other food businesses in the world - will I be leveraging my mom's unique recipe for a gram flour based dish katariya and make that my unique selling point, or use my own unique recipe of Mutton Nihari? Is it the taste I want to focus on, or the experience of dining, or both? Once I've figured those things out, I'll have to figure where to start this business, what are the things I'll need and how I'll be running this business.

Starting off with the basics, I'll need a place to do the business. If I want it to be a dine in, then I'll need a place big enough to have a decent sized kitchen, a room for keeping my inventory and a dine in area with a reception. So we are talking about approximately 1000 sqft of area. I would want it in a location where footfall is high, like a mall or active market? Or around college institutes? Or at a place that's surrounded by corporate offices. Depending on the place, the menu of items will have to be set and price benchmarking needs to be done. For example, college students prefer something pocket friendly, so the pricing shouldn't be more than INR 200 for two, whereas for corporates, it can be INR 600 for two. Accordingly, the portion size has to be defined and such.

Those details aren't as important as noticing the fact that my client of F&B Industry has probably gone through this journey, has thought about these things. His selection of place and menu benchmarking tells me about what he was thinking at the time of setting it up. By capturing that story, I can understand him better. And if his choices doesn't fit in to my expectations, It only means one of two things, either I am not able to see something in which case I'll try to think more or talk to them directly and ask, or otherwise they didn't put much thought into it in which case it gives me an opportunity to educate them with content, which can help me build thought leadership amongst this group by educating them about such things.

Let's go further ahead. Once I've selected a place, I'll have to rent a commercial space, which would cost me somewhere around INR 100,000/month (ballpark for a semi-active market in Delhi NCR). I'll have to talk to real-estate dealers in that market, get the place and get the furniture and decoration done. What's that, another INR 200,000 of (one-time) investment. Then I'll need the equipment, for which I'll look for suppliers in the market. I'll need commercial electricity connection, commercial gas connection, probably the licence of running the food business (in which case I'll research and get the FSSAI, ISO and other relevant registrations done). There are many requisites of getting those registrations, so I'll have to list down those requisites and work on each of them (this gives me another idea for a social media or blog post - compiling this information and publishing it for budding F&B entrepreneurs).

After that, I'll have to reach out to my friends asking them references for staff, or will have to poach the staff from other restaurants (another post idea - how to retain your staff when your competition is chasing them). I can also publish an ad in local news paper about the openings or I can use other creative ways (Post idea: 10 ways to hire staff for a restaurant).

For decorating the outlet, I can either use my own sense, or research about it and then copy another's idea or hire a professional for helping me with the branding elements (logo, colours etc) and implementing those brand guidelines in my dining area. (Post ideas: The essential elements of a good dine-in area; How to decorate your dine-in hall; Why do you need branding guidelines in your food business?)

So we have the place, the staff, the menu, the decorations - and I have probably spent approximately INR 1,000,000 on fixed cost (equipment, decoration, furniture etc) and have to pay another INR 300,000 monthly (for rent of place, salaries of staff and other overheads). Now, I need supplies to get started. I'll reach out to my local market first, but as I start getting more business, I'll need to find suppliers. How would I do that? Requires additional research and summary of that research gives an opportunity for another post/article that's relevant to my TG.

How will I reach that money of approximately INR 5,000,000 to keep business running for atleast a year? I can either reach out to my dad, asking him if he'd like to invest. Or I can reach out to my wealthy friends if they can help. Or I can go to owners of other F&B brands and propose the idea to them, show them potential profits and asking them to invest for a small part (shares) of the business. Or I can keep working in a private sector, earn and save that money to start the business. Whatever it may be, let's say I got that money and now it's time to start. (@My Team - You should probably take this detail into consideration. By looking into the source of investment, you can also guess their priorities towards profits/cost-saving/quality-of-service/experience/etc).

Now, the business is set up. How will I launch? I'll have to build a go to market strategy for it. I'll have to define a tag line, probably print brochures and hire someone to distribute these brochures around the area. I might have to have a launch offer that's exciting and too good to ignore. Like, Buy anything and get a mocktail for Rs. 1? Or I can be more through and do my research on best GTM strategies for restaurants, again, summary of which can be another blog post.

So once the business is running, ideally, it should start making money. But we don't live in an ideal world and there are 1000 things that can go wrong. Like, glassware can break and increase my overhead expenses. (Post Idea: How to prevent glassware damages in your restaurant). What are the other things that can go wrong? Staff conflicts? Chef being late? Supplies stocking out? Food Wastage during processing? I'll think and write down those 1000 things I can think of, as each of them gives me an opportunity to publish content (as a marketer) and helps me understand the customer's problems better.

Now, once I've noted all of this down, my next step would be to go to a customer and talk to them. This understanding will help me converse with them better and while talking to them, I can validate some of those assumptions. By noting down how they have done things differently, I can better align my pitch or product or service for them, which will lead to higher conversion rate and higher satisfaction with the product later on.

This isn't a one time exercise. If I was in sales profile, I would go case-on-case basis. I'd research about each client's business, create my assumptions about what choices they would have made at various forks. With the data I would acquire from my research into their business, I can align my assumptions towards reality and gain a better understanding of my client's mind. Once that's done, I'll be prepared for reaching out to them and better equipped to convert them.

Ah well, this is where this article ends. Did you see what I did there? I used my imagination to walk their journey, in their shoes. Please note that this is an article and not the actual exercise. The actual exercise has a document that is 10-pages long and much more boring to read :P

If you think I missed something, or able to point to more (post ideas), please feel free to add. It'll help me and my team with our jobs and you'll have our sincere thanks :P

Cheers