Firstly, is to recognize how important each and every customer is.
160 Robie St, Truro, NS (902) 897-7482
“ fresh thinking, healthy eating”
will come at some loss, which of course means the growth is less. And this works for all businesses, not just tech. If you run a hardware store and a regular customer decides to move across the country, well, you unfortunately lose those sales. Sometimes, like in that example, it’s out of our hands. But there are plenty of things we can do to keep customers. Firstly, is to recognize how important each and every customer is. Let’s face it, it’s their money that is keeping our business afloat, not our money. The current business jargon for this is being customer-centric, but before we coined that phrase, it simply meant caring about your customer. Now, let’s not all get twisted into the phrase, “The customer is always right!” We all know, as customers and vendors, no-one is always right, and often, it’s our
expertise that the customer is looking for to guide them. Caring about your customer means wanting to step in and guide them to something better when we see them going down a path that leads to failure. Putting the customer first can even mean not selling them something they think they want, if you know they won’t get benefit out of it. I was once working on a 7-figure deal with an extremely valuable prospect with a huge brand name. We were the only supplier they were talking to, and we’d built a significant internal team to help through the process. We had been negotiating back and forth over a number of months. The customer kept updating the parameters and asking if we could build processes for them that we hadn’t done before. We worked hard at the deal because it would have increased our revenue by 10%! But
72 SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • VOL 25 ISSUE 3
BUSINESS • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE 73
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator