Is Just as Important as Knowing Everything About Your Product
Knowing something about your customer is just as important as knowing everything about your product. Take politicians, for example. A politician will support your proposition only as long as it is politically popular or uncommonly rewarding.
That isn’t to say that politicians are any less honest or reliable than the rest of us. It’s just that politicians must shift positions constantly to keep up with the people they are supposed to be leading. Legislators, particularly in faraway places such as Washington, tend to be a little less reliable than governors, who are under closer local scrutiny, but have the same principle holds. It is the duty of someone who wants something from a politician either to (a) create the public climate that makes supporting that position attractive, or (b) do whatever is necessary so that a politico will return a favor from time to time, like fundraising or even organizational work.
Before you choose one tactic or the other, you had better be certain with whom you are dealing with. In this case, the governor was the type of politician who thought he had something his constituents would truly want. A shopping mall developer and the governor both went public together, and when it became rapidly apparent that the brothers had not created the proper climate of public opinion, the governor backed off.
To the developers’ credit, they finally got the message, hired local lobbyists, and put the pieces back together. After having asked for several hundred million dollars at the legislature and getting completely skunked, they got help at the municipal level. The current scaled-down version—call it a mini mega-mall—could have been even bigger. In fact, the developer created the 5.3-million-square-foot Mall in Canada, the largest shopping center in the world.
Identifying the customer does not mean that you make your pitch directly to that customer. Selling the governor in this case was easy… too easy. What the developer should have done was first build a support structure of “influencers” around that governor—the press, the unions, popular opinion, his own party, and so on—before pitching the main man. That involves a professional PR effort: stories extolling their already successful mall; leaks about competing cities plotting to sweep the developer into their fold; orchestrated demand for the product from leading opinion-makers. None of this groundwork was laid. Unfortunately for the developer, once the governor discovered he had no crew, it was time to abandon ship.
When you know your customers, some of their special interests or characteristics, you always have a basis for contacting and talking to them. I have a customer who’s a devoted Chicago Cubs baseball fan. The Cubs’ failure to make it to the top continues. That’s usually good for at least half a dozen condolence messages a year.
I have another customer who’s a stamp collector. No matter where I go, all over the world, I send him unusual and exotic stamps. I think he must like that. He’s been a customer for a very long time, and in all that time, I’ve met him only once.
Knowing your customer means knowing what your customer really wants. Maybe it is your product, but maybe there’s something else, too: recognition, respect, reliability, concern, service, a feeling of self-importance, friendship, help—things all of us care more about as human beings than we care about malls or baseball.
