Is That Really How Your Customers See You?

by Robert Miller and Stephen E. Heiman with Tad Tuleja

Remember the first time you heard your voice on a tape recorder? How could you possibly sound so . . . so . . . strange? No way could that odd-sounding voice be yours! You hear yourself every day, all day, and that voice on the tape sounds nothing like you.

Well, the same thing happens in regard to how each of us views our own companies. The way we see them is far from how others see them. That's understandable. We know our strengths—and weaknesses—and all too often, we assume our customers see things the exact same way. Not likely.

The truth is, our customers usually have entirely different views of our company, our products and our services. And if we expect to develop any kind of substantial relationship with our customers, we better find out what they think of us. We better start looking at situations through their eyes.

If you're not sure how your customers feel about you, ask. Of course, you might not hear what you want to hear, or what you possibly could have imagined. Here's an example from one of our workshops.

Our client was a regional division of AT&T, and the division's targeted account was a university. In terms of product capability, the AT&T people could offer an extremely good fit to the university's needs, yet they were having serious problems in expanding their penetration of the large account beyond a rather limited client commitment to long-line service. "Somehow," one account team member told us, "they just don't seem to see how much more helpful we could be to them, if they'd let us try."

Fortunately, the AT&T account team, following our advice, had invited the university's telecommunications chief to be a participant in our Large Account Management Program. At one point in the "Customer's View" section of the analysis, one team member turned to the guest and articulated his frustrations by blurting out "Just how do you see us, anyway?"

The frank answer surprised everybody but the university manager himself. "We've been buying from regional networks for 50 years," he said. "We see you as the new kid on the block." An "objective" observer might say that seeing the largest telecommunications company in the world as a "new kid" was a little ridiculous. But it made perfect sense to the manager, and to the AT&T account team it was a revelation. It made them recognize in a way that no amount of market research could have made them recognize, that the 100-year-old Ma Bell reputation meant next to nothing on this campus and that they would have to plan their strategy, therefore, "around" it.

In the words of the participant who asked the question, "When I heard that, it was like the first cup of coffee in the morning. For the first time, I stopped thinking about the account and started thinking about the world as they saw it." Which is the essential way to see it, if you want their business.

Adapted from Successful Large Account Management Robert Miller and Stephen E. Heiman with Tad Tuleja (c) 1991 by Miller Heiman, Inc., All rights reserved with permission of Warner Books. Inc.