June 4, 2019
Late last spring, I went fishing. Not just your garden variety “go down to the local pond and throw in a line” fishing. No, this was serious, “get really smelly, no kids allowed, get there by plane, truck, boat, then by foot, no cellphones allowed” fishing. It was real fishing—way up in a foreign country. OK, it was Canada, but it was still way up there.
I’m no avid fisherman. I take the opportunity to go out maybe two to three times a year. It’s not something I feel as if I must do every couple of weeks. So, why did I go through all that effort to get there? Because a couple of very good customers put this trip together a few years ago and asked me to go. We went, had a great time, and now we make it an annual event. And, oh yes, I like these guys as people, as well.
These are not just Patti Procurement Manager or Mario Marketing Director we’re talking about here. These are folks who are either owners of their own businesses (companies doing at least $30 million annually) or high-level executives in large multinational companies—all are the proverbial “big hitters.” These are people who know their businesses and know how to make money—serious people I can learn from—good customers but also great individuals to be around.
So, did it help my business? You bet it did, and probably because I made a point of not talking about printing, presses, board, converting, finishing, or anything else related to my business. The vast majority of time we spent on business, we talked about their businesses, about what gives them headaches, about what problems they’re facing, and even about their successes. I learned a huge amount about how I can help them. I did not try to impress them with my latest flexo press acquisition.
Now, you might not have the opportunity to go on a yearly weeklong fishing trip—or maybe you do—but there are some things to learn from this experience.
Chuck’s Rules for Nurturing Customers Rule #1: Pick customers you like. I don’t mean just picking the right people to go fishing with; I’m talking about picking the right customers for your business. You read me right—you do, in every case, pick your customers. They don’t pick you first. Usually, you pick them—and, you keep picking them!
If you don’t like—and trust—your customers, it’s probably not a good idea to do business with them. Why? I assume that your goal is to find customers whom you can keep around for a long time and get them to give you money for a long time. (If that is not one of your goals, you’d better rethink what you are doing. You are in a for-profit business, after all.)
Even more basic, if you don’t like them, they probably don’t like you, and it’ll be very difficult for you to add real value to your business relationships under those circumstances. If you are not adding significant value, real value, your relationships are short-lived, regardless of how you priced your latest project.
Here are some key criteria to consider when selecting—and continuing to select—customers:
- Will they do what they say they are going to do?
- Do they have solid core beliefs?
- Do they have a good business plan or strategy?
- Do I like them as people?
Rule #2: Spend way more time talking with your customers about their business, their concerns, and the challenges they face than talking about your latest equipment acquisition. News flash: Customers don’t care what kind of presses you have!
Think about it in other terms: When you bought your last car, did you ask the dealer either of these two questions: 1) Was that car painted using DuPont paints in a Global Finishing paint booth? or 2) Were those seats made by Lear Corp.? I won’t have any seats that weren’t made by Lear!
Of course you didn’t! You might not even have known that Global Finishing makes automotive paint booths or that Lear makes seats. Even if you did know this, it wouldn’t make any difference to you.
You want a car that gets your 18-year-old to college, or a car that impresses your clients, or a car that can get you and your family to a vacation spot in comfort and safety. In short, you want a car that solves a problem for you. How or where it was made is probably way down the list of what is important to you, if it’s on the list at all.
So, what makes you think that your customers—or potential customers—give two hoots about the fact that their brochures were composed on the latest Mac, printed on a Barberán press, converted on a Bobst, all done in a beautiful facility by the most caring employees on earth by a company that has been around for 30 years?
Practical Application 1: Pull out your company brochure and compare it to the paragraph right above this block. See any similarities? If not, congratulations, you are in the minority. Almost every packaging company presents itself in almost the same way. If you see similarities, then maybe you should spend some time figuring out exactly what makes you different. (Hint: It’s not your presses.)
To recap my two customer rules: 1) Pick customers whom you like and who like you, and 2) talk with customers about their businesses, not yours.
One More Customer Rule(That Makes Three)
Rule #3: Make sure you and your sales team are put into positions in which these types of conversations can happen. Conversations of real importance seldom happen when reviewing the specifications of a job with a packaging buyer. They rarely happen when delivering a quote on a job. (Your salespeople will claim the opposite is true. Don’t believe them.)
Meaningful conversations happen in one way and one way only: planning. I know, I know, you hate to plan, you can’t get your sales team to plan, and everybody else is putting out fires all day long and doesn’t have time to plan. But, the types of conversations that really expose customer desires, problems, and opportunities don’t happen naturally—so plan for them.
My recent fishing trip didn’t just happen. The first year, it required a tremendous amount of planning on everybody’s part. One guy in particular took the initiative to find the right travel coordinator, the right lake, the right transportation, and the right week to make it all happen. Since then, the trip planning process has been much easier, since we go to roughly the same area every year.
You’ll find that, much like these fishing trips, these kinds of customer discussions get easier every time you do them. The first one is hard, requires lots of pre-planning, and may not even go off all that smoothly. But I promise you that it will pay dividends for years for every customer you try.
Practical Application 2: Consider a press salesperson who wants to have a conversation about how he can sell a press to your company. Is he likely to get good information on how he can go about it from your lead pressman or pressroom supervisor? Probably not. He can get pretty good technical specifications from those two guys, but to find out the real he needs to be talking to the company president or, at least, to a vice president of manufacturing or marketing.
The same is true with your company’s sales reps. They can’t find out the real problems and opportunities by talking with your customers’ sourcing team. Make sure they—or you—are talking two to three levels above the guy who is handing out packaging programs. This is where the real decisions are made and the real information lies.
If you can apply the three rules above to your top 10 customers and prospects, you’ll see a dramatic turnaround in account profitability in the next 12–24 months.
In the next issue, I will give you 12 billion reasons why you need to consider upping your expectations about pursuing business in a different way. Or, I’ll give you 12 billion reasons why you don’t have to buy another press or hire the heavy hitter.
Chuck Delaney is managing director of GROW Retail Technologies. He can be reached at 708-491-5090 or cdelaney@growrt.com.
