Beat the recession by listening to your customers

The economy continues to ring with uncertainty. Despite retail sales being up year over year this past Thanksgiving weekend, the stock market is down as the future remains cloudy. It is easy to become frustrated in these times, but often, the best businesses evolve and improve in exactly this type of climate. The work starts first with investing in your existing customers.

The first step is to get to know your customers at a much deeper and critical level than your typical day to day relationship. You may do this work via a survey, customer visits, informal phone conversations or any other way of meaningfully gathering honest feedback. The goal is to dig deeper to understand your customer’s perspectives so that you may identify previous unknown strengths to exploit and weaknesses to improve. By investing time in your customers, you will gain tremendous insight for shoring up existing relationships and building new ones.

Here are some sample questions to get you started with the process:

• How satisfied are you working with us?
• What areas of need do you think require the greatest improvement by us?
• What do you like best about working with us?
• Are you currently considering alternative suppliers? If so, why?
• Who do you view as our competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
• What are the most important considerations you make when working with a supplier like us?
• What new innovations do you expect us to deliver on this year and beyond?

If you would like additional information on this topic or a free needs assessment, please contact a Thrivepoint Advisor.

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