Think About It… the e-book version

by Todd Youngblood

The problem with “good” customers is that they like you too much to complain about the little things. What’s scary is that little things almost always grow into big things…

Your rep tells you that everything with “Big Customer X” is fine. He makes phone contact weekly and a personal call twice a month. Their order volume is growing at a steady pace. There has not been a single complaint for 11 months. The cross-sell effort appears to be progressing nicely.

Then you get a letter from your key contact informing you that starting next month, your products and services will no longer be required.

Unlikely scenario? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. While you were anything but fat, dumb and happy – maybe just a bit of complacency had begun to creep in. The special procedures you designed and put in place exclusively for them had been working great for almost a year – even though the business environment had changed a bit. The relationship with the decision maker seemed good – even though most of the interaction lately had been with a subordinate. You know their requirements in painful detail – or at least you did back when you submitted the proposal. (Need I go on?)

Maybe it makes sense, at least once a year, to get an independent perspective on the quality of your service, support and relationship with every key account. This objective outsider might be asked to conduct a series of interviews with customer personnel and ask them about:

• Their perception of the value you deliver
• Their perception of what makes you different
• What they like and dislike about your company, your products, your services and your support
• What’s missing from what you provide
• What new projects, strategies and requirements are on the horizon

It’s the basic stuff. Nothing fancy. Just one more crystal clear message to your customers that you really are thankful for their business. That you are deadly serious about and absolutely committed to understanding how you can serve them better. That you are conducting this unique set of interviews using an objective third party to demonstrate that you really do “walk the walk.”