Not all Customers are Created Equal

In my post dated July 27 2010 I talked about the need to know your customers. I am a firm believer that in order to build a relationship with someone you need to know them first. Here are some thoughts from that post and some other things I've been thinking about lately on why it's so important to understand who your customers are:

• You need to know who the main contact is at the company. Will you be working with the IT Admin, Database Administrator, Chief Marketing Officer etc?" It's very different working with an IT Manager versus a Chief Marketing Officer.
• What industries does your customer work in? Although IT managers are similar there are differences between an IT manager at a university and one at a Fortune 100 financial services company.
  
• What types of business challenges do they face? For some it might be something easy as they needed a new phone system or is it complex like a global implementation that will include four very different products.


• What size company do they work at? It's a very different world for an IT manager at a huge enterprise company versus a SMB company.


• Even location plays a factor. Many years ago I managed phone representations for Matrix Marketing and I taught that it was important for the reps to parrot their customers including rate of speech, tone, formality, etc. While I don't recommend going to that extreme, I do recommend that you be aware of differences such as east coast/west coast personalities, fast/slow speakers, etc.

How well do you know your customers? Happy referencing!