Do You Know What Your Customer Wants?

Large companies do surveys to find out what their customers want. They get results showing what most of their customers want and then try to give that to all their customers. If what you want is not what most of the customers want, tough luck - that's what your getting.

Small companies can be different. They can concentrate on each customer and find out what each one wants. Customers who have non-standard needs often end up with small companies who can specialize in custom solutions. The small company that recognizes this and caters to these customers can do very well.

When you're dealing with individuals, in retail and with consumers, finding out what these customers want is fairly straightforward since you're dealing with one person or a family. When you're selling business-to-business, it gets more challenging but the rewards can be greater as well.

It basically comes down to knowing your customer; knowing his business; knowing his goals and finding out what he wants from this particular project. Typically you're dealing with a co-ordinator who has the job of making this work. There is a contractual framework and there are other people within your customer's company who have a stake in the project. For a truly successful conclusion, you have to fulfill the contract and give them all what they want as much as possible while still protecting your own interests and making some money - usually a tough assignment. To tackle it in an organized fashion, we have to assign priorities.

The first priority is the contract. The most important part of it is where it defines what has to work and how it has to work for the contract to be considered successfully completed. Typically the what is quantitative - twelve computers simultaneously on line - while the how is qualitative - for two uninterrupted hours at a minimum transfer speed of etc. You have to make sure that you can do what is promised but also that it is a useful measure of completion for your customer.

Second is your customer's co-ordinator. You not only have to satisfy him but you also have to make it possible for him to inform his internal counterparts. They must have useful input into the project to influence it so that they can get what they need from it. If you make sure that your contact is given reliable, consistent data and built up into a credible source for project information, your battle is halfway won.

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