Having Deeper Client Conversations

What’s the secret to standing out in a crowded market? It’s not your product. It’s showing your customers that you care about *their* goals and challenges beyond the sale.

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If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:

I'd like to talk to you about a planning process that I think you should be doing with all of your customers. Now, some of my clients do this once a year, some of them depending on how big and fast moving the company is, might do this as much as quarterly or at least twice a year. And that is they sit down maybe with their primary stakeholder or with a group, and they ask some very strategic questions.

One is what is going on in the world right now that's affecting your business. So it could be about, you know, socio economic trends. It could be about economic trends, it could be anything, and it should be both positive and negative. So what are the positive things affecting you or what are the negative things affecting you?

Then we want to talk about maybe just that primary department if you're working. You know what's going on in your group. So, you know, if you're talking to, a marketing department, what's going on in marketing inside the organization or inside your vertical market that we need to be concerned about. And this is a time where you also might want to bring trends. This is what we're seeing from other marketing departments. How are you affected by that?

The other strategic question is what are your strategic goals and priorities, right. Have you set an annual plan or a quarterly or semiannual plan. But what is your priority right now? So what could we be working on together that's going to help you get to those goals.

How are you being measured? What are your KPIs? What are you really driving towards in the short term? And I mean short term? I mean, you know, over a 12 month period. What's your primary strategic objective?

And then the last question is, well, you know, what are those things that you should be thinking about that you're not. Now you might want to give this question some thought before you go in, but this is where you can really add value in one of these strategic conversation. And that's simply by saying here's what we're seeing other companies like yours doing. Now, other companies like yours could be other companies in the area, other companies in the vertical market, other companies at departments that you're working with. What I'm looking for here is you giving them information that's best practice or forward thinking, so that you can help them be at the front end of their business and take a look at things that might affect their business down the road.

When you do that, you add real strategic value. Now, I know that you're not going to have a solution for every one of those problems, or maybe even one of those positive things that are affecting their business. You can't possibly help them with all of their strategic objectives and all the trends, but that's okay. Remember, all you want to do is create an environment where they think of you different, that this conversation is an apples to oranges comparison against all of the other vendors that they're working with. But they can count on you to have deeper conversations because you're showing that you care about their business as a whole, and not just about that part of the business that can pay you for a product or service.