List the faults of your customers and make their weaknesses your strengths!

In two distinct business areas your customers will often perform badly and their ‘weak performances’ will in turn lead to disappointing results for you and for them. One area concerns their ‘performance’ in using or reselling the products you sell to them, and the other area relates to how well they ‘generally’ run their businesses. A simple example would be that if you sold retail products to my retail store and I failed to sell your products to my customers, that would disappoint you and stifle your sales growth. Secondly, if I don’t run a good retail store, in that I don’t train my staff well, we don’t set sales goals for the store or for staff…and our customer service is average, all of these ‘general’ deficiencies will also impact negatively on your sales growth.

The point then is that you must know precisely what the two forms of customer weaknesses are…and then do all in your power to reverse their performances in one or both areas of weakness. This ‘obligation’ holds true for companies and for sales people, because the weaknesses of your customers are not intentional and usually the customers are unaware of their faults and failings. Companies and reps usually do know where customers go wrong, but they complain more than they act! Prior to speaking at a conference for ‘dealers’ some years ago, organised by a company selling power tools, I was briefed by the MD and he said ‘John, these blokes like to service the products and get oil on their work clothes, but when it comes to planning, marketing, selling, service and management…they are useless, and I think you should know what kind of people you are going to speak to.’ This disrespectful attitude does nothing to arrest or reverse the nature of the problem. In every market, with no exceptions, the customers will disappoint their suppliers. In ‘financial services’ most clients fail to plan or to be proactive. In most retail stores customers know what they want but not what they need. In the printing industry most printers want quotes but they need to help drive marketing action for clients (which produces print jobs!). Here are two examples of creating strengths, at rep and company level…

• When I started as a rep at age 21 I had 3 very ‘notable’ customers who bought a lot of products, and many customers that were ‘not able’ who bought very little. All I used to do was observe and understand what the good customers did and pass this knowledge on to lesser [non competitive] customers…plus I would pass whatever positive information I had to the better customers too. Everyone was happy and bought more products!

• When I was at Schwarzkopf, many of our salon customers were weak at selling key services (such as colour and treatments, etc.) and retail products, plus they failed to set sales goals for staff or the salon; they were also weak at training staff on service and selling skills…and the owners lacked marketing ability. These customers were in effect our ‘2^nd sales force’ and we felt compelled to assist, and so we created an array of ‘beyond product services’ such as management systems, sales concepts, staff development programmes, a business education forum and much more…over many years. Salons loved this form of support and gladly gave us the lion’s share of their purchases, plus as they became more productive…they needed to buy more products!

If you offer strength to offset market weakness, in a non-patronising way, you will be welcome anywhere, you will control your sales growth and you will be the ‘preferred supplier’! This involves the key move from distribution to contribution.