Do you know who your customer is? Would you know them, if you saw them on the street? Do you know what they look like, sound, act, feel, smell, and and even taste like? The question of “who is our customer” is the foundation of every business or organization. Peter Drucker wrote, “It is the customer who determines what a business is.” Yet from the performance of so many companies, it appears this is far from being as concisely defined as needed.

True, define it too narrowly and miss valuable market opportunities but, define it too broadly and make no one happy. Yep, you need to get it pretty close to right.

You could argue that a sales crew worth their weight in sales contracts should make up for this lack of focus. Yes, some businesses can make it in the short term by hiring sales people that can sell the proverbial “ice cubes to Eskimos.” Yet I’d like to make a distinction at this point between sales and customers. The 21st Century value chain places a higher value on customers, who represent multiple transactions or repeat business. A company can have sales which may be one-time events or they can have customers which can represent multiple transactions, which usually results only when the outcome is characterized as successful by the customer. We know sales can and do occur outside of successful customer outcomes (SCO’s). However, it is not the norm for subsequent transactions in the absence of an SCO. Therefore, if your customer outcomes are not successful, it’s doubtful you have a customer and sales do not equal customers. Customers are more valuable. Is your organization measuring success by sales or customers? I digress…

The right value propositions nearly sell themselves. In other words, if you know who your customer is, what they expect, communicate to your customer your ability to deliver on those expectations and then deliver, you will get and retain customers. However, it’s the first two questions in need of our best efforts and agreeably, the hardest to get clarity. A lot of focus from good and well meaning companies is put on the ability to deliver and subsequent delivery of a good or service in hopes of finding a customer and hoping they are happy. However, wouldn’t it be better to know your customer and what they want?

I would like to offer a suggestion I’ve found extremely helpful from my experience as a troubleshooter and problem solver. One of the most effective techniques in problem solving is the question of what is in the picture and is not the problem or not broken. This can also be a valuable tool in terms of discovering who your customer is by pointing out who is in proximity, yet is not your customer. This is extremely effective for an organization in two ways. First, it allows you to more clearly define the area around the target which is not the target. Then it can help in developing an articulation of the value proposition which defers those non-customers. The best articulation of a value proposition not only attracts your customers, but subtly and appropriately repels non-customers. So, for excellent clarity on your customer, also define and articulate who is not and why. An additional benefit of clear articulation in regard to who is not your customer enables those in the organization to clearly identify these non-customers and, more importantly, remove the cover or excuse of blowing off real customers under the smoke screen claim they are not.

In the 21st Century value chain, the customer will not take a back seat. It’s not just about showing up at the stop anymore; they won’t even get on the bus unless they recognize you as their driver.