What the Customer Wants You To Know

I was thrilled to run across the book, What the Customer Wants You to Know at Borders yesterday.  Author Ram Charan shows by example the importance of putting the customer at the center of all you do in your organization from product selection to marketing message to the all important sales process.  The subtitle of the book is “How everybody needs to think differently about sales.”

He shares the story of a company that is struggling with the fact that they are loosing market share.  They offer quality and affordability – so what’s the problem?

Chapter Three shares the learn that you need to become the customer’s trusted partner.  Once they figured this out and then convinced the sales/executive team that the customer needed to be at the center of their sales process – things started to happen.

Ram calls this a VCS strategy:  VALUE CREATION SELLING.

Are you struggling with making connections with your customer?  Are you loosing market share?  Is your sales process focused on profits, product movement and margin?

How about changing your philosophy to understanding what the customer WANTS (not what you want to sell), building that relationship of trust and then meeting the needs of your customer.

I highly recommend Ram’s book as a great place to start for a better understanding of the value of putting the customer first.