Takeaways

  • Not all customers’ dollars are the ‘same shade of green.’
  • You ought to know on which field of play you can compete. Let the competition duke it out among themselves while you pursue what you can win — and keep.
  • Core customers must be retained for more than just the short-term dollar.

You’ve all heard that movie line from the pop-culture sales movies. That is, “Don’t judge me on my winners, but judge me on my losers …”

Following is another piece of business context to bring to that quip, yet different than what Hollywood intended.

A Singular Focus

Every sustainable enterprise possesses at least one thing it can hang its hat on. It’s that “one thing” your business can — and should — “own.”

If your marketing and sales teams target your customers and subscribe to the notion of using a narrow scope to match buyers to your services, you already know the type of customers that you can and should win — all day long. And you also know them by name, address and cell number.

If, on the other hand, you don’t know what your company’s “one thing” is, set aside this blog right now and head into your boss’ office. If the answer to the question doesn’t roll off their tongue, schedule a niche-defining meeting THIS WEEK. Because if you don’t know it, chances are good that others who “need to know” don't either.

“Every sustainable enterprise possesses at least one thing it can hang its hat on. It’s that one thing your business can — and should — own…”

The Cost of the ‘Core-Customer’ Casualty

When a customer directly in your wheelhouse is lost, your sales director shouldn’t accept it without dialog nor “shrug it off” with the hope of “well, better luck next time.”

This is vitally important. While it often gets lost in the total revenue scorecard, your best and most profitable customers are the ones you can keep. Over 40 harvests (and a business likely to be transitioned to heirs), the dollar earned from a customer that can be renewed is compounded by an order of magnitude. 

I don’t pretend to be a mathematician, but let’s just agree that the impact is profound. 

So if your salesperson loses a core “production ag customer” sitting squarely in your “sweet spot,” yet quickly deflects accountability by referencing a sale of a tractor to a senior-citizen rural lifestyler who’ll never put enough hours on it for a second purchase, well … you get the point.

Similarly, consider those random customer conversions that resemble a “wild-hare” purchase or one impetuously made to “send a message” to your competition. Do you want to get in a bidding war over someone you can’t keep?

The ‘1-Thing’ Exercise

First, the rules of the exercise. Quickly replying “our product” earns a thrown flag. You cannot cite the products you distribute as a unique differentiator. Why not? Because you are only as good as your nearest competition presently is not. 

And that would assume that whoever supplies that product for you maintains an unrivaled commitment to innovation and continuous improvement that no one on this side of the universe can or will ever touch. You cannot control that which you don’t have oversight of.

“While it often gets lost in the total revenue scorecard, your best and most profitable customers are those that you can keep. Over 40 harvests, the dollar earned from a customer that can be renewed is compounded by an order of magnitude…”

Here are some priming thoughts based on anticipated answers in this market.

  • ‘We’re a Knowledge & Consultative Business’ — Then you must know who most needs your expertise and how to maintain it internally — and how to market it and to whom.
  • ‘We’re the Lowest Cost Provider’ — If you’re choosing to compete on volume and its accompanying lower margins, you must know which customers value price among all else. And how to manage your inventories and your own revolutions on that wheel.
  • ‘We Compete on the Best Technical Service’ — If you hang your hat on truly having the best technical and/or repair service in your AOR, you also can’t expect everyone will gladly fork over your higher billable rate. You must know who values it and also communicate the need to compensate your business to keep that talent around.
  • ‘We're About Personal Relationships’ — If you believe the iron is secondary to all else, you must know who values that 1:1 attention enough to pay a premium for it. And how to manage the customer appreciation dinners, drinks, community donations, golf and game tickets.

Easier Said Than Done … So What’s Your ‘1-Thing?’

While the best in service journalism are attacking with a multiple-pronged offense, I’d say our peers in our business tend to fall into one of 3 camps.

  • Sales — “Our experienced sales force can sell its way through any situation.”
  • Circulation — “No one can touch our clean, qualified-by request customer database. If our audience is your target market, we’re your only choice.”
  • Content — “We’ll still exist in a world where advertising and sponsorship disappears because the content is so highly relevant, trusted and accurate that the audience would choose to buy it if necessary.”

We’re decidedly and without apology pursuing in #3 (Content) in our respective niches, but always working at the other two as well. Our content-first modus operandi was being tested and refined by my dad, Frank, and eventual Lessiter Media founder, while I was still in diapers more than a half-century ago.

Today, we have 17 brands for our niche audiences in conservation ag, machinery/technology and equine health. Except for two titles whose audience is exclusively obtained via paid subscriptions, we endeavor to keep the content team employed — and the lights on — through customers’ investments in advertising and sponsorship. That makes this end of the business vitally important to our sustainability, but not our driving focus.

Still, our leadership team must continually resist the urge to follow ideas that would distract us from our core, or result in us trying to be “all things to all people.”

We must be OK telling prospects when a better fit elsewhere exists for their product, aims/ objectives and target customer. Also, we won’t be a good match for customers who only want a transactional relationship. That’s a kryptonite to our superpowers. Our “Proven Process” is detailed for all to see here.

We must go deep with the enterprises who we are right for — those who recognize they may not have all the answers and who value a highly defined audience that cares about education, information and knowledge — because it’s voting for these things with its time and wallet. 

After 3-plus decades in this trade media biz, I’m not interested in trying to “get lucky” courting business that won’t renew. We can tell early on who we’ll be unlikely to keep under any circumstance, including those who “one-and-dones or don’t subscribe to the time-test principles of marketing.

Defined by Knowledge

Whatever area you choose to hang your hat, your business — from administration to operations to those out in the field — will need to keep “upping your knowledge quotient.”

If you aspire for your sales team to model a learning organization, not just a closing organization, you might find interest in this 2018 TO THE POINT column, “A New-Era Hybrid Position?” 

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