As if you know more about my customers than me... please leave!
I was reminiscing with an old colleague today about some of the issues we have managed to over come in our careers. One of the stories we discussed warrants its own article so here goes, let me know if you have come up against this in your own career, I would love to know how you overcame it (if you did!)
Most retail businesses have GM’s or Directors of product categories, its rare you find a model which varies from this. Those people who are given this responsibility often try and learn everything they can about their customers so they can run their categories and range products effectively, driving the biggest ROI.
Isn’t it funny though that the one piece of information which these guys generally overlook is the customer data right under their nose driven by the CRM or Loyalty. I’ve been in countless meetings in various organisations where a Merchant or Buying Director has said these words “there is nothing you can tell me about my customers that I don’t already know”. I think at one point I was even told to leave someone’s office for been so brazen! I mean, how dare I?!
So how do you overcome this?
Talking about centralising customer insights and showing a flashy report is not enough, it needs to come with examples of how the data insights (which they already knew, of course) can be used to improve their business category. Then they will start to listen and add you on facebook, invite you for lunch and buy you gifts, probably. I have countless examples of this.
In all of these situations it took a stakeholder strategy to change ingrained thinking. Which stakeholder is most likely to listen and understand our approach? Which stakeholder has influence over the others? How do we get the head of the organisation to embed our thinking into everyday work.
It’s a little like playing domino’s, you influence and help the stakeholders that will give you time to show large increases in results and ‘voila’ everyone wants to know their secret!
Anyone have a similar story?